A threat highlight from the New Jersey Cybersecurity & Communications Integration Cell (NJCCIC):
Summary
As the 2023 school year begins, threat actors are poised to launch various types of cyberattacks ranging from direct deposit scams to ransomware. The education sector is often targeted during holiday breaks. Threat actors take advantage of this pastime when staff is away or just prior to busy seasons, such as the beginning of the school year, long weekends, or before the end of a marking period when final grades are due. Within the last few weeks, publicly announced ransomware attacks sharply increased and included Cleveland City Schools in Tennessee, Clifton Public Schools, the Prince George’s County Public Schools – one of the largest US school districts with approximately 130,000 students in the Washington D.C. area – and the University of Michigan, just three weeks after the MOVEit data theft attack impacted Michigan State University.
Recent scams targeting college students include bogus credit cards, scholarship and grant scams, employment scams, fake student loans, and student loan forgiveness scams. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) released a consumer alert emphasizing that students do not need to pay for access to government student loan debt relief programs. Furthermore, the Better Business Bureau (BBB) identified a recent tactic used by scammers that included a phishing email or SMS text message claiming to be from the school’s financial department. The message instructs the student to click on a malicious link provided in the email and log in with a student username and password, subsequently sending user credentials and other information to the cybercriminal and inadvertently downloading malware.
Additionally, between July 1 and August 13, Trend Micro researchers identified 152,186 back-to-school shopping-related scam URLs, with a 62.47 percent year-over-year increase. These statistics stress the urgent need for parents, teachers, and students to be equipped with strong cyber and media literacy skills.
Recommendations
The NJCCIC recommends users educate themselves and others on this and similar cyber threats. Users are advised to refrain from initiating contact in response to unsolicited or unexpected emails and, instead, call the referenced organization via the phone number found on the official website. Users are also encouraged to mark and flag these messages as “spam” or “phishing” via their email client so that the system may better learn how to identify similar fraudulent emails and prevent them from being delivered to end-user inboxes.
Furthermore, the NJCCIC recommends education sector administrators perform scheduled backups regularly, keeping an updated copy offline in the event of natural disasters or if online backups become encrypted. Additionally, keep systems up to date and apply patches as they become available, enable strong endpoint security, enforce cyber hygiene, and implement a defense-in-depth strategy. The NJCCIC provides further reporting in the Ransomware: The Current Threat Landscape post and additional recommendations in the Ransomware: Risk Mitigation Strategies technical guide. Additional information can be found in CISA’s StopRansomware Guide. Cyber incidents can be reported to local police departments, the FTC, the BBB, the FBI’s IC3, and the NJCCIC.