Data breach incident compromises the University of Sydney

The University of Sydney confirmed that one of its third-party service providers had sustained a data breach incident that exposed the personal information of recently applied and enrolled international applicants.

The public university started operating in 1850 and became the home to 70,000 students and about 8,500 academic and admin personnel. Australians consider the University of Sydney one of the country’s most important academic institutions.

 

The University of Sydney claimed that the incident only had a limited effect.

 

The University of Sydney announced that the incident had a limited impact on its networks. Their initial investigation discovered that the attack did not impact any of its students, employees, or alumni.

In addition, the investigation claimed that the attack was an isolated incident within one of their platforms, which does not affect the University systems. Furthermore, the university’s security team found no evidence of personal information misuse after the attack.

It is still unclear why the hackers picked this season to attack USDY or attacked the system deliberately to earn profit through stolen information.

The university also disclosed that the impacted individuals will receive support to lessen the risk of exposure. The academic institutions also have an ongoing process of identifying the international applicants who suffered from the campaign.

They also urge affected or concerned individuals to contact their support team by emailing the official website for any questions. They could also report suspicious communications or phishing attempts to the same website.

The public disclosure of the data breach does not reveal the data of the occurrence of the violation or which third-party service was affected. There is no further information about the disruption in the University of Sydney’s systems, but students and faculty should remain vigilant. Also, all relevant individuals related to the university should treat unwanted communication with extreme caution.

The attacks on academic institutions have been prevalent this year. Earlier this week, the University of Michigan disclosed that it had shut down its operation because of a severe cybersecurity incident.

Cybersecurity experts claimed that the sudden surge of attacks against academic institutions could be because of the importance of student and faculty data. Threat actors could exploit such information for profit or use it for other malicious purposes.