The next university was the victim of a hacker attack: this time Karlsruhe University is the victim and is completely paralyzed. Furtwangen University (HFU) has already been affected in the last few months. The Kaiserslautern University of Applied Sciences was hacked back in July and, according to the attacker, over 240 GB of data was stolen. The Baden-Württemberg Cooperative State University also fell victim to an attack at the end of September.
According to Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences, an anomaly in the IT infrastructure was discovered on October 02nd. As a result, a crisis team was immediately activated. Aware of the fact that cyber attacks have already been carried out on other public institutions across the country, Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences took the entire IT infrastructure offline as a prophylactic measure for security reasons and started the damage analysis with IT security expert support. The responsible authorities were also informed about the attack.
Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences is completely offline
According to the university, they are currently working hard to analyze and repair the damage so that IT operations can be resumed as soon as possible. However, the experts cannot yet make any precise statements about when which systems can be put back into operation. According to the university, the university and faculty management, the computer center, the university's IT security department and external experts are in constant communication about the current status. As soon as the concrete results of the analysis are available, the university wants to inform the public.
This is how it should continue
Student representatives (AStA and student councils) and employees should initially be informed about the current situation and further steps every Wednesday at 11:30 a.m. in an information event organized by the Rectorate, the computer center and IT security. University members can also raise their concerns in a question and answer session. However, study operations should continue as planned. The university's homepage was replaced by a simple emergency page with current information, as this no longer works either.
Universities in the attackers' sights
The list of universities being attacked is getting longer and longer. Furtwangen University (HFU) hat is still struggling with the consequences of a cyber attack in mid-September and has probably lost some student data. The Kaiserslautern University of Applied Sciences was hacked back in July and, according to the attacker, over 240 GB of data was stolen. Also The Baden-Württemberg Cooperative State University fell victim to a hacker attack at the end of September and is still in the process of overhauling the IT systems.
In many cases it is not clear who attacked the universities or is not made public. Overall, the education sector is increasingly under fire. This is also proven by the numbers from Malwarebytes. Malwarebytes was able to detect a total of 2022 known ransomware attacks on educational institutions between June 2023 and May 190. Between the first and second half of this period, the number of attacks increased by 84 percent.
More on the H-KA help information page