School pays ransom after cyber attack

A SCHOOL is reported to have paid a £1,500 ransom after falling victim to a cyber attack.

Durham Sixth Form Centre was targeted in April last year when a virus encrypted college files which contained students’ work.

The identity of the hackers has not been revealed, but it happened around the time of the global WannaCry ransomware attack that hit the NHS, banks and businesses.

That attack – widely believed to have been the work of North Korean hackers – was estimated to have affected more than 200,000 computers in 150 countries.

Phil Butler, a former policeman and cyber-crime expert at Roxburgh Forensics, told the BBC paying the ransom was ‘madness’. He said: ‘You’re exposing yourself to a whole world of pain, becoming an easy target for future attacks, and not only that you’re encouraging the criminality, actually potentially facilitating money laundering.’

Student Tommy Davis claimed his grade in his IT A-level suffered because his work was never recovered. ‘They tried to decrypt it but they were never able to, so basically all the IT coursework I left over there to get marked was gone,’ he said.

‘So I didn’t get the marks I’d actually done work for.’

The school confirmed that it made the payment and that it has informed police about the hacking, the BBC reported.

A spokesman for Durham Police said it would not recommend the payment of a ransom.

The sixth-form college, with approximately 1,300 pupils, refused to comment yesterday.