Munster Technological University is an Irish University. The Cork campus of MTU has experienced a cyber breach incident. We look at the current status of this cyber breach.
Key points about the cyber incident at MTU Cork campus
- MTU Cork campuses at Bishopstown, National Maritime College of Ireland, Crawford College of Art & Design, and the Cork School of Music have been a target of a cyber-attack.
- The said cyber attack took place over the previous weekend. In other words, the incident may have happened between the 4th and 5th of February 2023.
- It is presumed that the Cork campuses have been a subject of a ransomware attack. However, there has been no official confirmation in terms of the size, extent, and shape of this cyber breach incident.
- Presumably, a Russian ransomware group that is a spin-off of the Conti ransomware group is behind the attack. But, there has been no reliable confirmation of this presumption.
- MTU has released a statement today. The campuses will remain closed until 12th February 2023. Student classes will begin on 13th February.
- MTU is working with cyber security professionals and the National Cyber Security Centre to investigate this cyber breach.
- We expect the restoration of MTU servers to be a slow and tedious process on account of the implicit threats to the data.
- MTU campuses at Kerry remain unaffected by this cyber breach incident.
It seems that the MTU campus servers have been taken offline to prevent further cascading impacts on the network. Cyber-security professionals, presumably, are trying to conduct an audit of the extent of the breach.
The following facts remain unclear as we write this:
- if the servers belonging to MTU have been encrypted by the ransomware group
- whether any ransom demand has been made by the attackers
- as of now, no ransomware group has claimed ownership of the attack
We will update this story as and when the MTU university offers any additional inputs and reports about this cyber incident.
Rajesh Dhawan is a technology professional who loves to blog about smart wearables, Cloud computing and Microsoft technologies. He loves to break complex problems into manageable chunks of meaningful information.