The Pennsylvania State Schooling Affiliation (PSEA), a labor union representing educators throughout the state, says hackers stole the delicate private data of greater than half one million of its members.
PSEA is the biggest group for educators in Pennsylvania, representing present and former academics, counselors, well being care employees, and college social employees.
In a submitting with Maine’s lawyer common on Tuesday, PSEA stated it skilled a cyberattack in July 2024 that noticed an unauthorized actor entry its community to steal a trove of information belonging to greater than 517,000 people.
The stolen information consists of extremely delicate private data, corresponding to members’ government-issued identification paperwork, Social Safety numbers, passport numbers, medical data, and monetary data containing card numbers, and their related PINs and expiration dates.
PSEA stated member account numbers, PINs, passwords, and safety codes had been additionally accessed throughout the breach, based on a letter despatched to affected people.
“We wish to stress that not all information parts had been acquired for each impacted particular person,” PSEA instructed affected members within the letter.
PSEA additionally stated it “took steps, to the perfect of our skill and data, to make sure that the info taken by the unauthorized actor was deleted,” implying that PSEA was the goal of a ransomware or information extortion assault, and subsequently paid a ransom demand to the hackers accountable.
Paying a ransom demand isn’t any assure that the malicious hackers deleted the stolen information. Final 12 months’s takedown of the infamous LockBit ransomware gang unearthed proof that the gang’s hackers nonetheless retained reams information belonging to victims who had paid a ransom demand.
PSEA didn’t reply to TechCrunch’s questions.
