As of Thursday morning, the school district had not heard of any such messages being sent to people in the school system’s community. N.C. Department of Public Instruction said on Wednesday that some employees in the state’s public school system have received the messages.
N.C. DPI had a news conference on Wednesday evening to discuss the threatening messages.
PowerSchool is a critical piece of web-based software used by the school system that stores a variety of information on staff and students including addresses, student identification numbers, and, in the case of employees, social security numbers. The software is used by all K-12 public schools in the state, as mandated by the state.
The local school district learned earlier this year that a PowerSchool data breach impacted an estimated 150,000 current and former students and 28,000 current and former staff members.
N.C. DPI said it believes the people behind the threatening messages have access to the same data tables that were compromised in the PowerSchool breach.
“It is not yet clear if the same threat actor is responsible for both incidents. However, PowerSchool shared in a statement that they do not believe that a second data breach has occurred because this involves the same data set,” the state agency said in a statement.
The FBI has been conducting an ongoing investigation.
A letter from the school district sent to employees and families Thursday morning alerted the school community to the messages and asked them not to open any links embedded in suspicious messages, not to reply or engage with the threat actors; and to report threatening messages to techreporting@wsfcs.k12.nc.us and NCDPI’s Cybersecurity Team.
“We understand that this is a concerning update in the PowerSchool SIS data breach incident, and we are committed to ensuring that WS/ FCS staff are fully informed of the robust support services in place to help protect your personal information,” the school district said in a statement.
The school district and others across the state are in the process of replacing PowerSchool with Infinite Campus. It will be in place in the local school district at the start of the 2025-26 school year.
“I want to express my regret to students, parents, teachers, district and school that have been affected by this incident,” State Schools Superintendent Maurice “Mo” Green said at Wednesday’s press conference.
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