The cyber incident has taken most of Newcastle University’s systems offline and officials estimates it will take weeks to recover.
While students are slowly preparing to return to their universities and colleges after a prolonged absence due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Newcastle University in England has been left reeling from a cybersecurity incident that has affected almost all its systems.
The university first became aware of the cyber incident disrupting its networks and IT systems on Sunday, August 30th, and deployed a full incident response plan to evaluate the extent of the issue and stabilize the situation.
Although Newcastle University only stated that it suffered a cyberattack without identifying a culprit, according to BleepingComputer the DoppelPaymer ransomware gang is claiming credit for the attack sharing 750Kb of stolen data on their website as proof.
Due to the early stage of the investigation, officials did not disclose whether any personal information was compromised. They however insisted that the university takes the security of its systems seriously and that it responded quickly to the situation.
Moreover, they confirmed that there was no evidence that the university payroll data had been compromised adding that their online payment system has not been affected either, since it is managed offsite by the university’s payment provider.
The incident response also brings issues itself. “All University systems – with the exceptions of those listed in the communications (Office365 – including email and Teams, Canvas and Zoom) are either unavailable or available but with limitations. Access may cease at any point,” officials said
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