UK University Slowly Going Back Online Following Hack Attack
The University of Sunderland, located in northern England, is slowly getting ready to launch its IT infrastructure back online. The university became the target of a cyberattack that brought down now just its IT systems, but also its telephone lines.
The attack took place sometime last week. The university had to resort to Twitter, to post an update, informing staff and students that all online classes are being canceled. The university websites, IT network and its telephone lines were all brought down as a result of what was eventually described as a cyberattack.
Even though the university's temporary website, set up after the main infrastructure went offline, initially had a message on it stating systems were going down for maintenance, it turned out the reason for the disturbance was actually an attack by a malicious actor.
The university's vice-chancellor, Sir David Bell, put up a video on the same temporary website, explaining the situation. In his statement, he called the incident with the university's IT network a "major" attack.
Even though last Friday Sunderland IT staff weren't sure how long it would take to restore everything to working order. ZDNet reports that the Sunderland university switchboard and student telephone helpline are up and running, but the website is still offline as of Monday, October 18.
The university management is doing everything it can to keep things running normally. Students who still attend classes in person continued their daily routines as usual and assurances were made that the IT outage will not affect staff salary payouts.
