Malware and legal requirements force academics and students to join a near-endless line in order to pick up their passwords
Usually, if you forget your password or need to change it for other reasons, getting a new one is a straightforward process that involves a few clicks. Now imagine you would have to prove your identity and retrieve your password in person. Don’t rush to laugh this off as a bizarre fantasy, as thousands of students and faculty members at the Justus Liebig University Giessen in Germany were unlikely to be laughing when they learned that they would have to do just that.
According to the institution’s statement, 38,000 students and academics now have to stand in line, ID card in hand, so that they can receive new passwords to their university email accounts. The distribution of new passwords was prompted by a malware incident detected last week, with the university’s network being offline since December 8th. As for the unorthodox way of issuing new passwords in person, the staff are citing the legal requirements of the German National Research and Education Network (DFN).
English version of #JLUoffline: pic.twitter.com/YrpgnDW69F
— Universität Gießen (@jlugiessen) December 9, 2019
Arguably, in a way the university can be lauded for its incident response. Since the incident was noticed, the servers and machines were taken ..
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