A recent report published by the cybersecurity firm Armor says ransomware infections have hit over 500 US schools in 2019 to date. Armor warns the rate of attack seems to be picking up with 15 new ransomware victims in the last two weeks, all of them educational institutions. From the report:

— Since January 2019, Armor has identified a total of 49 educational institutions and/or school districts that have publicly announced ransomware attacks. "These attacks have potentially affected 500 K-12 schools. Since January, Armor has identified 182 ransomware victims in the U.S., including schools, municipalities, law enforcement agencies and healthcare networks. Out of the 182 victim organizations in 2019 in the U.S., educational institutions (49) make up the second largest pool of victims, after municipalities (70), followed by healthcare (27)."

— "Cybercriminals know these organizations can't afford to shut down, they are often using out of date hardware and software, and they have few security measures in place. This is a deadly combination in the case of a ransomware attack, which provides for a high sense of urgency and a high probability of large payments." (Chris Hinkley, Head of Threat Resistance at Armor)

A U.S. court decision today determined net neutrality laws could return at the state level overruling Trump administration's effort to block states from passing their own net neutrality laws. The court, however, upheld the 2017 repeal of net neutrality laws. David Shepardson reporting in Reuters: "The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said the Federal Communications Commission erred when it declared that states cannot pass their own net neutrality laws and ordered the agency to review some key aspects of its 2017 repeal of rules set by the Obama administration. But it left open the possibility the FCC could seek to block state efforts on a case-by-case basis. The court also found that the FCC acted properly when it overturned a 2015 decision..."

The U.S. House Judiciary Committee is investigating Google's plans to implement DNS over HTTPS (DoH) in Chrome according to a report by the Wall Street Journal over the weekend. Congressional antitrust investigators say Google could use the new protocol to gain more significant competitive advantage by making access to consumer data harder for others. In a letter issued this month, the Journal reports investigators for the House Judiciary Committee have requested more information from Google on the "decision regarding whether to adopt or promote the adoption" of the protocol claimed to improve Internet security.

— Google has denied the accusations stating in an emailed statement: "Google has no plans to centralize or change people's DNS providers to Google by default. Any claim that we are trying to become the centralized encrypted DNS provider is inaccurate."

— "We knew this was a controversial topic within the smallish Internet technical community, but were not quite prepared for it to blossom into a front-page-of-a-national-newspaper kind of a debate," writes Milton Mueller today in response to the report. He notes: "this is not a Justice Department antitrust probe, it is initiated by a congressional committee that is known for being rather political."