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A cyber attack has stunted the operations of one of the world’s most prestigious and famous universities.
The University of Cambridge has reportedly suffered a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack alongside several other major UK higher education institutions using the Janet Network, a mass data-sharing platform that allows researchers to share large amounts of data online.
Students of the university received an email from Stuart Rankin, Cambridge’s head of user services, confirming the outage was the result of a DDoS attack.
Rankin reportedly classed the attack as an overload from compromised machines, restricting the university’s operations and preventing certain IT platforms like CamSIS and Moodle.
The attack was claimed by infamous DDoS threat group Anonymous Sudan, which said it had attacked the digital infrastructure of the University of Cambridge as well as the University of Manchester.
“Reason for the attack: UK’s unconditional support for Israel and complicity on the ongoing genocide in Gaza as well as bombing campaigns on Yemen,” Anonymous Sudan wrote on its Telegram channel.
“We therefore claim any harm to the aforementioned universities & any collateral damage.”
The group then shared screenshots as evidence of the outage, including an X (formerly Twitter) post by Cambridge University Professor Charlotte Summers, which showed that the Janet service was currently offline.
“Would the person/people undertaking the DDoS attack of @Cambridge_Uni internet kindly stop, please,” she wrote.
“Some of us have work to do…”
Multiple universities have reported a malicious denial of service attack which started around 15:00, making internet access intermittent. Incoming connections to websites, VLE, VPN will also be impacted.
— Clinical School Computing Service (@Cambridge_CSCS) February 19, 2024
UIS is working with JISC to restore service.
The attack on Cambridge University came as the university has been restoring its library’s electronic legal deposit systems, which are operated by the British Library, which suffered its own cyber attack last October.
The British Library was hit by the Rhysida ransomware group, which listed stolen data for sale before posting it publicly when the library refused to pay ransom.
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