(SUDBURY, ON) Updated - Laurentian University appears to be still trying to recover from cyber attack that was first discovered almost a week ago.
In an update on the evening of February 24th, the University issued an update saying that substantial progress had been made from Friday evening through Saturday to bring the authentication system online and offered reassurance that the IT department continues to investigate "the depth and breadth of the cyber incident to assess risk and determine what further actions might be required."
Original - As of February 23rd, Laurentian was communicating via social media and using Google Docs.
The Laurentian University website, currently a static information page, says that Information Services at Laurentian were investigating a technical issues affect multiple systems. An update followed the afternoon of February 19th, 2024 indicating that they were working to restore services but offer no additional information.
By February 20th, it was clear that Laurentian had fallen victim to some form of cyber attack and the majority of their systems including basic internet access, student platforms and most faculty platforms were offline. The update says that payroll services are mostly unaffected.
In an update on February 23rd, Information Services advised that in person learning will proceed next week following "Reading Week" but will be limited due to lack of internet connectivity and emphasized that efforts will focus on re-establishing the authentication system allowing users to login followed by access to the digital learning platform, Google and Zoom.
Students and faculty can expect to be without internet access for most of the week in most buildings. Internet access in student residence has been restored.
The update went on further to ask that educators offer special consideration to online, remote and hybrid students.
A FAQ page has been setup for faculty and students here.
Laurentian has not issued a statement providing any further information surrounding the incident but based on the timeframe we're seeing here, it would suggest that the University likely fell victim to a ransomware attack or some other data-destroying event.
In a breach or Denial of Service situation, one would expect the restoral process to proceed much faster and internal services to come back online significantly quicker.
Ransomware is a type of malicious software that infects computers, encrypts files, and demands payment for decryption. It enters through email or software vulnerabilities, locks files, demands money, and threatens deletion if not paid. Prevention involves staying updated, being cautious with emails/links, and regularly backing up files.
In June of last year, the University of Waterloo narrowly missed a ransomware attack after being tipped of by the RCMP that an email server on-campus was compromised. In this event, luckily, only a very small number of users were affected and the university's IT users needed to reset their credentials.
In December, the University of Sherbrooke in Montreal allegedly fell victim to a ransomware attack and in January a ransomware gang know as Lockbit claimed that it had begun releasing data that it claims to have stolen from the university.