Hamburg University of Applied Sciences (HAW Hamburg) was added to the leak site of the Vice Society ransomware group over the weekend, following an attack in December.
The university, which has 16,000 students, revealed that the hackers gained administrative rights to central storage systems, before encrypting various virtualized platforms and deleting saved backups.
HAW Hamburg warned that “significant amounts of data from various areas” were copied, including usernames and “cryptographically secured” passwords, email addresses and mobile phone numbers.
The IT team recommended that students and staff change their passwords “for all internal university applications,” especially for Microsoft Teams, and avoid using passwords they have used before.
The Hamburg attack was part of a spate of ransomware strikes against German-speaking institutions, including the University of Duisburg-Essen, which was targeted by the Vice Society ransomware group in November, and the University of Zurich, Switzerland’s largest university, which suffered a “serious cyberattack” in February.
The HAW Hamburg attack coincided with other reports of data thefts, such as the news that Brazilian conglomerate Votorantim had 3TB of data stolen.
With attacks on educational and health institutions continuing to increase, institutions need to consider whether their cybersecurity protocols are sufficient and to ensure their data and software is up-to-date.
