Cops keeping in touch with cyber terrorists

Law enforcement continue to communicate with a cyber terrorist group that all but paralyzed the Columbia Falls School District earlier this month, Flathead County Sheriff Chuck Curry said Monday night.

Curry couldn’t disclose details of the communications, but said they were ongoing.

The 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 sheriff’s office.

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 stole school student information and other sensitive documents from school 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.”

Meanwhile, school had pretty much gotten back to normal, said Superintendent Steve Bradshaw.

Police had a greater presence at school last week, with uniformed officers in the halls.

This week, Bradshaw said about 90 percent of the student body had returned to school after the scare.