Thousands of New York City student data lost to a MOVEit breach

A new MOVEit breach has enabled a group of hackers to steal documents that contained sensitive information of more than 45,000 New York students. According to the NYC DOE, the attackers acquired such information after exploiting their MOVEit Transfer server.

The New York City Department of Education explained that they use the MFT software to securely transfer data and documents internally and externally to different vendors, like education service providers.

This New York government sector claimed they immediately employed the MOVEit patch after the developers released it to address the critical flaw. Unfortunately, the threat actors have already exploited the bug in a previous widespread exploit before the release of the security update.

 

NYC DOE quickly took down the affected server after confirming the MOVEit breach.

 

According to the Department of Education, they have temporarily shut down the affected server to mitigate the impact of the MOVEit breach. In addition, they conducted an internal investigation, which allowed them to identify the affected DOE files.

The initial results revealed that the attack had compromised about 45,000 students’ data and the DOE staff and related service providers. Additionally, the attackers have accessed approximately 19,000 documents without authorisation from relevant individuals.

The confirmed data included in the breached documents are Social Security and employee ID numbers. On the other hand, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has also conducted its investigation to learn more about the breach and how it affected thousands of entities.

Furthermore, the NYC DOE claimed they are working with the NYPD and the FBI to address the situation. The Clop ransomware group is the primary suspect of the attack after claiming responsibility for the MOVEit Transfer exploit earlier this month.

This cybercriminal group stated that the MOVEit Transfer vulnerability allowed them to infiltrate hundreds of companies that employed the MFT platform. Therefore, more undisclosed companies could suffer the same thing as the previous ones that already confirmed a breach.

Companies should now employ the patch for the MOVEit Transfer flaw to prevent illegal intrusions that could inflict significant damage.