LA school district was warned of ransomware threat before recent shutdown

Illustration by Carlo Cadenas / The Verge

The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) is now slowly moving back to capacity after a ransomware attack launched over Labor Day weekend, which prompted an unprecedented shutdown of computer systems in an attempt to contain the effects of the malicious software. The attack on LAUSD, the second-largest school district in the US, put officials on high alert, with fears over lockouts from school management systems and unauthorized access to student data triggering a response from federal, state, and local partners.

But it's not the first time LAUSD systems have been exposed to ransomware - and not the first warning the district has received about ransomware. The same systems narrowly avoided being hit with another similar attack in...

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