University College of London (UCL) became a victim of ransomware cyber attack on Wednesday. As a result, the educational institution’s database is under siege of the malware developers who are demanding a ransom of 3 BTC in exchange for a decryption key.
The Information Services Division of the London University has confirmed the cyber attack and said that it has taken a precautionary measure to lock down the access to the shared and networked drives used by the staff and students of the college to curb further spread of the malware.
According to our sources of Cybersecurity Insiders, the attack might have been launched through a phishing email which was accidentally clicked by one of the staff or students of the college. And it spread like a wildfire soon triggering panic among the staff and students who could access the network after lunchtime.
And as per the details available to us, the Chief Technology Officer of the University has asked the IT staff to use the recent backups for restore. As they are not willing to pay the hackers, they are planning to use alternative business continuity plans which are already in place on the premises.
Meanwhile, the University has asked all its staff and students not to open any attachments or click links in emails, as urged them to stay wary of emails coming from suspicious contacts.
UCS informed the local police authorities and the National Cyber Security Center of UK about the ransomware attack.
Note- Ransomware is nothing but a malware variant which takes the data as a hostage on a database and locks it down until a ransom is paid.
