Some data is ‘breached’ during a hacking attack on the Alabama Education Department

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Alabama’s education superintendent said Wednesday that some data was “breached” during a hacking attempt at the Alabama State Department of Education.

Superintendent Eric Mackey said the June 17 attack was stopped while it was in progress. He said they are working to determine exactly what information might have been compromised.

Mackey said “there is a possibility” that some student and employee data might have been compromised in the attack and urged people to monitor their credit.

“What I would say is to all parents and all local and state education employees out there, they should monitor their credit. They should assume that there is a possibility that some of their data was compromised,” Mackey said at a Wednesday press conference.

He said they have brought in a contractor to go “line by line” through state servers to determine what information may have been taken by the hackers. He added that employee bank account and direct deposit information is not at risk because they don’t keep that information on state servers.

“We don’t know exactly what data was breached and we can’t disclose everything. But again, the attack on our system was interrupted and stopped by our IT professionals before the hackers could access everything they were after. That we know,” Mackey said.

Mackey said they believed the hackers were attempting to encrypt data and extort a ransom for its release. He said there is an ongoing federal criminal investigation into the attack since they believed it involved foreign hackers.

The Department of Education created a website https://www.alabamaachieves.org/databreach/ to provide information about the hacking attempt and an email, databreach@alsde.edu, for people to submit questions.