Manassas City Public Schools Education Foundation Breach Incident Score: Analysis & Impact (MAN2902029111025)

In this Rankiteo incident briefing, we review the Manassas City Public Schools Education Foundation breach identified under incident ID MAN2902029111025.

The analysis begins with a detailed overview of Manassas City Public Schools Education Foundation's information like the linkedin page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/manassas-city-public-schools-education-foundation, the number of followers: 361, the industry type: Philanthropic Fundraising Services and the number of employees: 72 employees

After the initial compromise, the video explains how Rankiteo's incident engine converts technical details into a normalized incident score. The incident score before the incident was 764 and after the incident was 737 with a difference of -27 which is could be a good indicator of the severity and impact of the incident.

In the next step of the video, we will analyze in more details the incident and the impact it had on Manassas City Public Schools Education Foundation and their customers.

On 09 November 2023, Manassas City Public Schools (MCPS) disclosed Cybersecurity Incident (Connectivity Disruption) issues under the banner "Cybersecurity Incident at Manassas City Public Schools (MCPS) Leading to School Closures".

Manassas City Public Schools (MCPS) experienced a cybersecurity incident causing connectivity disruptions and phone outages across the school system.

The disruption is felt across the environment, affecting Connectivity systems and Phone systems.

In response, teams activated the incident response plan, and began remediation that includes Collaboration between internal IT and external cybersecurity experts to secure and restore systems, and stakeholders are being briefed through Public announcement via Facebook by Superintendent Dr. Kevin Newman, with commitment to regular updates.

The case underscores how Ongoing (as of November 9, 2023), with advisories going out to stakeholders covering Public announcement via Facebook; commitment to regular updates for families and staff.

Finally, we try to match the incident with the MITRE ATT&CK framework to see if there is any correlation between the incident and the MITRE ATT&CK framework.

The MITRE ATT&CK framework is a knowledge base of techniques and sub-techniques that are used to describe the tactics and procedures of cyber adversaries. It is a powerful tool for understanding the threat landscape and for developing effective defense strategies.

Rankiteo's analysis has identified several MITRE ATT&CK tactics and techniques associated with this incident, each with varying levels of confidence based on available evidence. Under the Impact tactic, the analysis identified Endpoint Denial of Service: Application or System Exploitation (T1499.004) with high confidence (90%), with evidence including connectivity disruptions and phone outages across its entire school system, and full closure of all schools due to operational paralysis and Network Denial of Service (T1498) with moderate to high confidence (85%), with evidence including connectivity disruptions affecting administrative and communication systems, and system-wide shutdown implying network-level disruption. Under the Initial Access tactic, the analysis identified Exploit Public-Facing Application (T1190) with moderate to high confidence (75%), with evidence including vulnerabilities in critical public infrastructure (implied exploitation of exposed services), and system-wide impact suggests initial access via public-facing applications (e.g., learning tools, admin portals). Under the Defense Evasion tactic, the analysis identified Impair Defenses: Disable or Modify Tools (T1562.001) with moderate to high confidence (70%), with evidence including collaboration to secure and restore systems implies defenses were compromised, and prolonged outage suggests attackers evaded detection/response mechanisms. Under the Lateral Movement tactic, the analysis identified Remote Services: Remote Desktop Protocol (T1021.001) with moderate confidence (65%), with evidence including system-wide shutdown suggests movement beyond initial entry point, and disruption of administrative functions and digital learning tools implies internal propagation. These correlations help security teams understand the attack chain and develop appropriate defensive measures based on the observed tactics and techniques.