FBI director says agency is involved with cyber threat case
Republican Sen. Steve Daines brought up cyber threats to Columbia Falls and Flathead Valley Schools during a hearing last week with FBI Director Christopher Wray.
The Montana senator said the cyber threats impacted 15,000 students and staff in the valley and asked Wray if he was aware of them.
“We are actively involved in the matter you’re referring to in Montana,” Wray said.
Wray said it illustrated that cyber threats are “everywhere.”
“It’s no longer ransomware to a big Fortune 500 company. It’s hospitals, it’s schools, in your case. It’s a threat that is growing.”
Wray said some ransomware authors have been indicted, others have been “sinkholed” which redirects them into the hands of law enforcement.
“Make no mistake it’s a very serious threat and growing,” Wray said.
What is FBI doing? Daines wondered.
Wray said the problem transcends boundaries. They’re working more and more with partners in other countries.
The investigation into the cyber threats at Columbia Falls continues. No arrests have been made yet.
The cyber terrorist group, which refers to itself as TheDarkOverlord Solutions, is located outside of the United States and is also the subject of active investigations by authorities in other parts of the country, according to the Flathead County Sheriff’s office.
The hackers stole school student information and other sensitive documents from school servers.
They’ve demanded a ransom from the school district, asking it to pay between $100,000 and $150,000 over 12 months — and, in exchange, the group stated they would not release the information they have stolen from the school.
They also sent violent and threating text messages to individual teachers and students after they found their phone numbers off the hacked servers.
The hackers have done this sort of thing before — attacking healthcare company servers in the past and at one time, even hacked a studio server that had unreleased episodes of the Netflix Series “Orange is the New Black.”