Columbia Falls School District Number 6 notifies employees whose data may have been compromised by TheDarkOverlord

Interesting.  The Columbia Falls School District Number 6 in Montana, who had been attacked by TheDarkOverlord, sent out notification letters and notified the Montana Attorney General’s office on January 5. In their submission to Montana, they note that the breach began September 1, and ended on November 13.  In actuality, the November 13 date was not the end of any attack or breach: it appears to be simply the data on which investigators determine the nature and extent of the breach of district employees’ information.

Here is the text of their notification letter:

We are writing to inform you about an incident potentially involving some of your personal information maintained by School District Six, and assure you that we take this matter very seriously. This notice pertains to the cyber extortion threat that Columbia Falls experienced in September 2017.

Upon learning of the extortion threat, the District notified law enforcement, launched an investigation, and retained a leading computer security firm to assist in the investigation. On November 13, 2017, the District’s ongoing investigation into the incident determined the nature and extent of the incident as it related to District employees’ information, including the identification of potentially affected employees, as a result of unauthorized access to a District server as part of the cyber extortion incident.

The District Administration Office maintained a database containing employee records that included your name and Social Security number. The forensic investigation could not rule out the possibility that the perpetrators were able to access this database.

Even though, to date, we have no evidence that your personal information in the database containing employee records was accessed by the perpetrators, or has been misused as a result of this incident, we are notifying you out of an abundance of caution so that you can take appropriate steps to protect yourself and to offer you a complimentary one-year membership in Experian’s IdentityWorks. This product helps detect possible misuse of your personal information and provides you with identity protection support focused on immediate identification and resolution of identity theft. IdentityWorks is completely free and enrolling in this program will not hurt your credit score. For more information on IdentityWorks, including instruction on how to activate your complimentary one-year membership, as well as some additional steps you can take to protect yourself, please see the page that follows this letter. Identity Restoration assistance is immediately available to you.

We regret any inconvenience or concern this may cause you. The Columbia Falls School District is committed to protecting the security and confidentiality of our employees’ personal information, and we are continuing to take steps to strengthen the security of our systems. We have established a call center to direct you to individuals who have resources to help answer your concerns related to this incident. If you have any questions, please call 1-866-329-9387, Monday through Friday, 7:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Mountain Time.

Sincerely,

Steven Bradshaw
Superintendent