Dutch university victim of cyber attack

ICT experts from the university, who still have access to the systems, are investigating the nature and extent of the cyber attack. The university expects the network to be accessible again on Tuesday at the earliest. The TU buildings and campus remain accessible.

“We realize that turning off the network has unpleasant consequences for all our students, employees, but also for other parties on campus,” says Patrick Groothuis, vice-chairman of the TU/e ​​Executive Board. “This necessary intervention was done to prevent worse. We hope for your understanding, and we will do our utmost to resolve this and have all systems accessible again as quickly as possible.”

The exact nature of the cyber attack is still being investigated, a university spokesperson said. The attack was discovered around 9pm on Saturday. The spokesperson cannot yet say too much about how exactly this was done in view of the investigation. “But it has all the hallmarks of a cyber attack given the suspicious activity on our servers.” The spokesperson, pointing to the ongoing investigation, does not say anything about what kind of suspicious activities this exactly concerns.

It is still unclear who exactly is behind it. There is no contact with a hacking party. There is also no question of a hostage situation, no systems are blocked. “We took the network offline ourselves to prevent worse.”