Report: American educational institutions are the primary hackers’ target

The security company Malwarebytes researchers recently said that due to budget constraints, shortage of network security personnel and lack of students’ awareness of security, the US education department continues to be attacked by malware. According to Malwarebytes data, in the first half of 2018 and 2019, American educational institutions were listed as the primary target by hackers. “What we found was that from January to June 2019, adware, Trojans, and backdoors were the three most common threats for schools. In fact, 43 percent of all education detections were adware, while 25 percent were Trojans. Another 3 percent were backdoors.”

The researchers also mentioned the example of the East Irondequoit Central School District in New York. It is reported that the school district provides networking equipment for teachers and students, but there is a general lack of security measures, so a malware called Emotet Trojan can infect more than 1,400 systems within 24 hours. Experts say that educational institutions should pay attention to cybersecurity, especially vigilant high-risk activities such as sharing files online.