A screenshot of the extortion page on the Medusa Blog, which is run by a hackers group. (Screenshot)
Six days are left before a hacker group threatens to release over 200 gigabytes of data pried from the Providence Public Schools Department (PPSD) if the struggling school district doesn’t pay a $1 million ransom.
The hacker group Medusa is taking credit for the alleged breach which appears to include a cache of parent emails, phone numbers and addresses, as well as drivers’ licenses and identifying information for district employees’ work cell phones as of January 2024.
The potential data dump comes a week after the district sent a Sept. 12 letter to the PPSD community, noting “irregular activity” on the school district’s network. The district enlisted a third-party IT company to determine next steps, after which internet access was shut down across the district’s schools and offices to prevent any further damage. As classrooms returned to old fashioned forms of instruction, a forensic analysis started on the suspicious activity.