Hackers claim to have published data from Mars Area School District
Cybersecurity analysts said Tuesday morning that data believed to be from Mars Area School District was published online by the ransomware group Vice Society. The group claims the data was stolen from the district during a recent hack.
In a tweet Tuesday morning, cybersecurity threat analyst Brett Callow of the malware protection company Emsisoft said Vice Society posted files they claimed were from Mars Area on its “dark web” site.
Mars Area School District was contacted but not immediately available for comment.
Callow explained a dark web site is in an area of the internet that can be accessed only with special browsers and can’t be found through search engines.
Cybersecurity analyst and security researcher Dominic Alvieri said on Twitter that Vice Society “is responsible for the Mars Area School District (attack) and files have been leaked.”
According to a September 2022 warning from the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, Vice Society is an “intrusion, exfiltration, and extortion hacking group” that first appeared in summer 2021.
Callow described Vice Society’s tactic as twofold: the group first steals the target’s data, and then locks the target’s computer systems, demanding a ransom to first unlock the system and secondly to supposedly delete the stolen data.
The Vice Society ransomware group also claimed responsibility for a recent hack on the country’s second largest school district, Los Angeles Unified School District.
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