Munster University of Technology (MTU)

History

2023: Theft of 6GB of employee data

In early February 2023, the Munster University of Technology in Ireland was subjected to a professionally organized cyberattack using a ransomware virus. In total, hackers stole 6 GB of confidential data, including commercial information.

The hacker group BlackCat posted on the Internet data that contains records of the Munster University of Technology (MTU) in Ireland about employees, information about wages. The set of information also contains extremely sensitive datasets that can lead to fraud and harassment of higher education teachers.

MTU University, which was created as a result of the merger of the Cork Institute of Technology and the Tralee Institute of Technology, has more than 18,000 students. It is the largest IT university in Ireland. The MTU has six campuses - four in Cork which were closed in an attack in early February 2023 - and two in Tralee which remained open.

Munster University of Technology (MTU)

MTU University announced on 6 February 2023 that its Cork campuses would be closed after a significant disruption to IT systems and a phone outage, and warned that classes would be cancelled. On February 13, an updated message from the university said that students and staff had returned to campus and that the resumption of full-time education on campus was continuing successfully.

A statement on February 14, 2023 warns that MTU University is continuing to analyse and investigate the incident in early February 2203, particularly in connection with a data breach into the dark web. IT services at MTU are not yet fully operational and the statement expresses gratitude to students and employees for their patience, support and cooperation during this time.

The MTU's website for this incident has recommendations "for all individuals who may be affected by this incident to follow official fraud prevention advice from the National Cyber Security Centre of Ireland and the Banking and Payments Federation."

The ALPHV ransomware written in Rust in 2021 is capable of working in mixed environments Windows, Linux, VMWare ESXi and has already appeared in attacks in the United States, India and Australia. ALPHV was developed from scratch, and for 2023 it is actively promoted on Russian-language hacker forums and is provided for use according to the Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) model. ALPHV developers position it as a cross-platform ransomware.^[1]

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