Hacker attack on TUM: personal data of students and staff compromised
Unknown hackers have attacked the IT systems of the Technical University of Munich and may have stolen data from users of the myTUM portal. The university has blocked affected accounts and filed a report with authorities.
Cyber attack on TUM — data breach affecting students and staff
According to augsburger-allgemeine.de, unknown attackers have compromised the information technology systems of the Technical University of Munich (TUM), compromising personal data in the process. The attackers' target was the central campus system TUMonline; however, according to the university, they were unable to cause any damage there.
Affected are individuals who were logged into the myTUM portal at the time of the attack. The hackers potentially gained access to passwords, names, home addresses and dates of birth. For staff members, official address and telephone number were also included; for students, matriculation number, degree programme and semester of study. How many people in total were affected was initially unclear.
According to TUM's assessment, the attackers aimed to use the stolen access credentials to gain administrator passwords and thereby penetrate the central system. They had no access to data such as grades or applications. Accounts with confirmed access have been blocked. The university is calling on affected individuals to change their TUM passwords and activate two-factor authentication — such additionally protected accounts were not compromised in the attack.
TUM has filed a report and informed the data protection authority. Only a few weeks ago, the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich also became the target of a cyber attack, in which approximately 600,000 data records of students were stolen.
Source: Die Zeit Kriminalität