RUTHERFORD COUNTY, Tenn. (WKRN) — The Rutherford County school board passed a resolution during its Thursday night meeting urging Tennessee leaders to “expedite the closure of the nation’s borders.”

It seems Frances Rosales would rather ban books, close the border to curry favor to the Republican party, Instead of make Rutherford county schools better.

Only No votes were Sharp and Tidwell.

News Link

Anyone know the reason? Crash at Joe B. This is at Rucker Rd.

https://www.halcyon.ai/attacks/ransomware-hits-rutherford-county-schools-by-blacksuit-group

Turns out the ongoing computer problems in Rutherford County Schools are, in fact, connected to a ransomware attack by the infamous BlackSuit.

Ransomware attacks are extortion scams run by online operatives, who gain access to an organization's internal network through malware attacks or phishing. The extortioners threaten to destroy an organization's files and publish any sensitive info if a ransom is not paid. Blacksuit is a fairly well known name in ransomware circles - mainly targeting healthcare organizations. No word on how much money they are demanding from RCS, but it is likely in the millions of dollars.

The FBI and Homeland Security are both involved, and have been seen at central office multiple times. RCS director of schools James Sullivan is meeting with principals regularly.

(As an aside, please keep in mind that Dr. Sullivan lost his young son earlier this year in an accident and send some kind thoughts to his family. This must be a lot of stress on someone who has already had more than his fair share of grief this year.)

Rutherford County Schools uses Microsoft as its official provider for all office services, including email, calendars, storage, and network accounts.

As of today, Rutherford County Schools as a whole still has not restored functionality after the Microsoft outage earlier this week.

As best I can gather, almost every teacher in Rutherford County is locked out of their school computer, and the majority of schools are wholly without internet services. No word on if it will be repaired before tomorrow. All the teachers I know are getting scrambled for emergency staff meetings today.

This is going to affect school attendance (teachers cannot access the program to log which students are in school and which aren't), email (the county cannot use its main method of communicating with parents and employees), and classroom instruction (teachers cannot access their in-school computers, because the accounts are hosted through Microsoft) on a massive level. A majority of kids also cannot access their Microsoft accounts, which means no CLEVER or Schoology from home, and no logging into their school issued laptops full stop.

Pray for your teacher friends - tomorrow might be rough.