Technion, leading the Israeli Technological University and the training center for cybersecurity, was hacked on February 12 by a new hacker group calling himself Darkbit.
Although the booster program was used in the cyber attack, the essence of the threat and requirements indicated the potential ideological opposition to Israel as the Aparteid state. On the other hand, the group can be completely criminal, and any ideological reference can be a second time to confuse investigators or simply play a role for popularizing Darkbit.
At the moment, Darkbit representatives demanded 80 bitcoins or six million shekels (about 125 million rubles) from the university to stop the attack and restore the encrypted data. For an attack on the university, the sum, just say, is rather big. At the same time, hackers threaten to increase it by another 30%if they do not receive the right amount of cryptocurrency within 48 hours.
The Israeli National Cybernetic Office (Incd) said that it is in contact with the technique to obtain a complete picture of the situation, help with the incident and study its consequences.
Incd revealed 53 similar incidents in the field of higher education for 2022. The department said that he had already met with representatives of this sphere in order to increase the awareness of what needs to be done to protect other institutions from such attacks.
At the same time, in Israel there is no comprehensive law on cybersecurity, which deprives the InCD powers in many areas, including in relation to higher education. According to the current Israeli legislation, the InCD can introduce mandatory cyber protection standards in only several dozen areas defined as “critical infrastructure”, but in the field of higher education the department is limited only by recommendations.
It is still unclear what vulnerability has led to a hacking an elite scientific university. The technion said that now classes can continue as usual, provided that students will keep all notes without using electronic devices connected to a university network. In addition, it is absolutely unclear whether it will be possible for students to study normally without using digital devices, taking into account the technological orientation of the university. It was decided to postpone all the exams in the technical until the moment when they would deal with the hacker attack and eliminate all its consequences.
attacks on higher educational institutions have recently happened more and more often. For example, more recently, we wrote about the attack on the largest university in Switzerland. Such attacks lead to the inoperability of websites and some internal systems of universities that interfere with the student training process.