- A year ago, an unprecedented attack on Maastricht University’s servers has led a sincere wake-up call to the high education system in the Netherlands and the EU.
- The attack, that took place on December 23rd 2019 has targeted the university’s servers. The servers held valuable research, information of students and employees of the university, emails have been blocked, registration for exams and courses have been hindered, and files and programs of the university have been blocked.
- The type of malware that has been used is Clop ransomware, which includes the full blocking to access to the university servers.
- The university was then faced with a choice of either paying a ransom of 200,000- 300,000 EUR that was demanded in Bitcoin.
- Why the attackers targeted Maastricht University, and whether it was initiated by dissatisfied former students, or other individuals, is yet to be discovered. However, academia and universities in the EU should take this unpleasant lesson, to say the least, as an example of how cyber practices should be conducted and how to prevent similar situations in the future.
– Ella Rosenberg | January 17, 2021
