[BreachExchange] Whisky business: Uni of Edinburgh servers Irn-Scru'd by cyber-attack

[Destry Winant]

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/09/12/university_of_edinburgh_cyber_attack/

The University of Edinburgh has gone offline from what appears to be a
massive distributed denial-of-service attack on the campus network.

As a result, the Scottish college's websites and wireless network
gateways are down due to a flood of junk traffic during its first week
of class.

So far no student or faculty data is believed to have been slurped,
and the uni has reported the incident to UK's National Cyber Crime
Bureau.

The school's supercomputing centre appears to not have been affected
by the attack, at least. The uni's internet provider, JISC, did not
respond to a Reg request for comment on the matter, but did tell the
Edi Evening News that it believes the attack is limited to the one
university network.

This isn't the first time Edinburgh U has made headlines for a cyber
snafu. Last year, a problem with the uni's email system ended up
causing some students to erroneously be told they wouldn't be able to
graduate on time.

This also wouldn't be the first time a British uni had its networks
crippled by a sustained DDoS attack. In 2015, the University of London
saw its online learning portal knocked offline by a prolonged attack.

If Edinburgh doesn't know the source of the attack yet, they may want
to check on the snack bar. Last year, an unnamed University was
crippledby a DDoS launched by a malware infection in its own IoT
vending machines. ®