The Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) is a non-profit art school with two locations in Georgia and one in Lacoste, France. The alums of this school vary greatly, the most notable being Dexter Lumis (WWE wrestler), Violet Chachki (media personality), and Ingrid Vanderbilt (founder of Empowering A Billion Women By 2022).
The breach was allegedly an attack by the ransomware group AvosLocker. The group told authorities that the college negotiated with them regarding a ransom but never ended up paying. In October 2021, AvosLocker updated its software to auction off the data that the original owners did not repurchase.
“A cyber attack on The Savannah College of Art and Design has resulted in a ‘limited number’ of current and former students and employees vulnerable to identity theft after an ‘unauthorized user’ accessed personnel files, according to a statement from the university,” says the SavannahNow news service.
This breach occurred on August 30th, 2022.
The breach impacts a limited number of SCAD students. The leaked information included passports, bank statements, and social security numbers.
The DataBreaches.net experts discovered that the hacker managed to steal at least 69,000 files about student information. According to Brett Callow, a ransomware expert, and threat analyst, SCAD is the 24th American University hit with ransomware in 2022.