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month after the hacked Department of Education software package maker PowerSchool paid a hacker ’s ransom to delete the company ’s banks of stolen student data , at least one school day district says it is now being extorted by someone who said the data was not put down .
PowerSchool , which cater its K-12 software package to thousands of schools to support 60 million pupil across North America , was hacked in December 2024 using a exclusive stolen credential , whichallowed a cyberpunk all-inclusive accessto PowerSchool ’s storage of in person identifiable bookman and instructor information , include Social Security numeral and wellness data .
The company sound out at the clip that ithad paid the hacker a ransom to allegedly edit the slip datum , but it has repeatedly refused to disclose the amount of money it paid .
Now , Toronto ’s district school board , which suffice around 240,000 students each twelvemonth , saidin a statementthat earlier this hebdomad it had “ received a communicating from a menace actor demanding a ransom using data from the antecedently reported incident . ”
Several other schools in North America meet extortion note , including across North Carolina , per local media .
PowerSchool reassert that it had paid the ransom at the time , saying the company “ thought it was the good pick for preventing the data from being made public . ”
Some cybersecurity professionals and law enforcement have long discourage victim from paying a ransom , as there are no guarantees that the hacker will adhere to their word when claim to delete stolen data . As testify by pastransomwareandextortionincidents , some gangs were later found to have retained huge amounts of stolen dupe data point , often torevictimize affected person with extra extortion attempts .
In a statement shared with client this week , seen by TechCrunch , PowerSchool said it “ recently became aware that a scourge actor has reached out to some PowerSchool SIS customers in an endeavor to extort them using data ” from the December 2024 falling out .
Beth Keebler , a interpreter for PowerSchool , enjoin TechCrunch that the company does not think this is a new incident because “ samples of data match the data point previously stolen in December . ”
PowerSchool has not yet said how many individuals are affected by its data breach . Several school districts that used PowerSchool at the time of the breach enjoin TechCrunch that “ all ” of their historical student and instructor data was compromise
In the lawsuit of Toronto ’s school dominion , the stolen record date back to at least 2009 and are potential to touch on millions of people .
