New ransomware gang claims cyber attack on Bartow County School System and others

Late last week a new ransomware gang, Chort, emerged. It posted six new victims to its data leak site including four US schools and colleges. One was the Bartow County School System which recently suffered a week-long outage due to a cyber attack in mid-October.

In a statement, the school confirmed an ‘unauthorized external source’ had caused the outage which affected its emails, websites, and internet. The school didn’t confirm whether or not this was a ransomware attack and hasn’t responded to Chort’s claims. Comparitech has contacted the school for more information and will update this article if it responds.

Meanwhile, two other schools claimed by Chort also canceled classes after network issues. Hartwick College, New York, canceled classes on October 28 after it suffered ‘tech issues.’

And Edwardsburg Public Schools was shut on September 30 due to a ‘network outage.’  Comparitech did receive a response from Edwardsburg Public Schools which stated: “Our IT and hosting is handled by various IT companies. We do not have any information about the outage you are referencing.”

The other school added to Chort’s website was Texans Can Academies. This also remains unconfirmed.

Who is Chort?

Little is known about the Chort ransomware group at this moment in time but if its first six victims are anything to go by, it appears to have a focus on the US education sector. Its other two victims were Tri-Tech Electronics, Inc. (a manufacturing company in Florida) and the Public Authority for Agriculture and Fish Resources, Kuwait. Both of these attacks also remain unconfirmed.

Ransomware attacks on the US education sector

So far this year, we’ve recorded 54 confirmed attacks on US schools and colleges. These have impacted 263,470 records in total and the average ransom demand has been nearly $500,000.

Other recently confirmed attacks include Abilene Independent School District which started notifying 16,181 people of a data breach late last week. This follows a cyber attack in June 2024 which was claimed by ransomware gang Cloak. It alleged to have stolen nearly 100GB of data.

Last month, ransomware attacks on Winnebago Public Schools and Marysville Schools were also confirmed.

We have also noted 63 unconfirmed attacks on the US education sector this year so far.

About Bartow County School System

Located in Georgia, Bartow County School System is home to nearly 14,000 students and consists of 12 elementary, four middle, and three high schools, one college, and a career academy.