{"id":2679,"date":"2025-09-05T17:52:33","date_gmt":"2025-09-05T17:52:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ft365.org\/index.php\/2025\/09\/05\/south-carolina-school-district-data-breach-affects-31000-people\/"},"modified":"2025-09-05T17:52:33","modified_gmt":"2025-09-05T17:52:33","slug":"south-carolina-school-district-data-breach-affects-31000-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/ft365.org\/index.php\/2025\/09\/05\/south-carolina-school-district-data-breach-affects-31000-people\/","title":{"rendered":"South Carolina School District Data Breach Affects 31,000 People"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"cphContent_pnlArticleBody\">\n<div id=\"layout-c558fa5b-86a5-4992-b5f7-895604d57dd2\" data-layout-id=\"2\" data-edit-folder-name=\"text\" data-index=\"0\">\n<p>A South Carolina school district suffered a data breach that may have exposed personal information of over 31,000 people.<\/p>\n<p>In a filing sent to the Maine Attorney General on August 29, School District Five of Lexington &#038; Richland Counties, South Carolina, stated that a June 2025 data breach may have affected 31,475 individuals<strong>.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The exposed information likely includes:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Current and former names<\/li>\n<li>Dates of birth<\/li>\n<li>Social Security numbers<\/li>\n<li>Financial account information<\/li>\n<li>State-issued ID info (driver\u2019s license, passport, etc.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>According to a sample of the letter sent to the affected individuals by Akil E. Ross Sr., Superintendent of School District Five of Lexington &#038; Richland Counties, the intrusion occurred on June 3.<\/p>\n<p>On that day, the District noticed an incident involving its computer network.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe engaged independent cybersecurity experts to assist with investigating and remediating our network. As a result of the investigation, we determined that some files were taken from the network by an external unauthorized individual,\u201d Ross Sr. wrote.<\/p>\n<p>School District Five of Lexington and Richland Counties operates a comprehensive educational system comprising 13 elementary schools, two intermediate schools, three middle schools, four high schools, one technical school and one alternative school.<\/p>\n<p>The District serves approximately 27,000 students and employs a workforce of around 2450 staff members.<\/p>\n<p>On June 5, local media outlet WISTV reported that bonuses for the District\u2019s employees had been delayed due to the attack.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Free Credit Monitoring for Affected People<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>In the letter to affected individuals, Ross Sr. also explained that the District was offering free access to Single Bureau Credit Monitoring, a Single Bureau Credit Report and a Single Bureau Credit Score.<\/p>\n<p>These services provide alerts for 12 months from the date of enrollment, notifying users the same day of any changes or updates occur in their credit file with the bureau.<\/p>\n<p>The District is also offering $1m in identity theft insurance provided through CyberScout, a TransUnion-owned company specializing in fraud assistance and remediation.<\/p>\n<p>Eligible individuals must enroll within 90 days of the date on their notice letter, which they had either already received or would receive by mail.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Claimed by Interlock Ransomware Group<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>The attack was claimed on June 24 by Interlock, a ransomware group that emerged in late 2024.<\/p>\n<p>The group has claimed responsibility for numerous attacks on education organizations and local administrations since it began publishing victims&#8217; data on its data leak site, particularly in some of the Five Eyes countries (Australia, Canada, the UK, and the US) and Italy.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<figure id=\"layout-43030bbd-4400-4f16-afaa-e1a5527ee19e\" data-layout-id=\"4\" data-edit-folder-name=\"image\" data-index=\"1\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/ft365.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/localimages\/3b085e3c-2d95-4e9a-b3a3-88b39a2a0faa.png\" alt=\"Source: Ransomware.live\"><figcaption>Source: Ransomware.live<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>So far in 2025, Comparitech has recorded a total of 29 confirmed ransomware attacks on US schools, universities and other educational institutions.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A South Carolina school district suffered a data breach that may have exposed personal information of over 31,000 people. In a filing sent to the Maine Attorney General on August 29, School District Five of Lexington &amp; Richland Counties, South Carolina, stated that a June 2025 data breach may have affected 31,475 individuals. The exposed<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2680,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["http:\/\/ft365.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/2679-610d01a5-e1ff-4ea3-82ec-99873f60f2ce.jpg",300,300,false],"thumbnail":["http:\/\/ft365.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/2679-610d01a5-e1ff-4ea3-82ec-99873f60f2ce-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["http:\/\/ft365.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/2679-610d01a5-e1ff-4ea3-82ec-99873f60f2ce.jpg",300,300,false],"medium_large":["http:\/\/ft365.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/2679-610d01a5-e1ff-4ea3-82ec-99873f60f2ce.jpg",300,300,false],"large":["http:\/\/ft365.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/2679-610d01a5-e1ff-4ea3-82ec-99873f60f2ce.jpg",300,300,false],"1536x1536":["http:\/\/ft365.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/2679-610d01a5-e1ff-4ea3-82ec-99873f60f2ce.jpg",300,300,false],"2048x2048":["http:\/\/ft365.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/2679-610d01a5-e1ff-4ea3-82ec-99873f60f2ce.jpg",300,300,false],"morenews-featured":["http:\/\/ft365.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/2679-610d01a5-e1ff-4ea3-82ec-99873f60f2ce.jpg",300,300,false],"morenews-large":["http:\/\/ft365.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/2679-610d01a5-e1ff-4ea3-82ec-99873f60f2ce.jpg",300,300,false],"morenews-medium":["http:\/\/ft365.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/2679-610d01a5-e1ff-4ea3-82ec-99873f60f2ce.jpg",300,300,false],"crawlomatic_preview_image":["http:\/\/ft365.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/2679-610d01a5-e1ff-4ea3-82ec-99873f60f2ce-146x146.jpg",146,146,true]},"author_info":{"display_name":"henry","author_link":"http:\/\/ft365.org\/index.php\/author\/henry\/"},"category_info":"<a href=\"http:\/\/ft365.org\/index.php\/category\/uncategorized\/\" rel=\"category tag\">Uncategorized<\/a>","tag_info":"Uncategorized","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ft365.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ft365.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ft365.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ft365.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ft365.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2679"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/ft365.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2679\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ft365.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ft365.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ft365.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ft365.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}