University of Calgary was crippled by a malware attack over the weekend…
On May 30, 2016, college officials reported the University of Calgary (U of C) is slowly recovering from a vicious malware attack that took place over the weekend. College students and staff were discouraged from using school issued PCs on Saturday, in an attempt to fix the issues. The origination of the attack is unknown at this time, but reports by Global News state the college’s secure wireless and active directory are to blame.
The U of C reported classes continued on Monday as scheduled, as some programs are available again such as Microsoft Office 365. It is believed, within the next three days, things should be back in order.
UPDATE: June 8, 2016 – A new report from ZD Net states the University ended up paying $20,000 in Canadian funds (over $15,000 USD) in an attempt to recover their encrypted files. It is unknown at this time if the encryption keys provided after the payment was made, indeed work.
UPDATE: June 9, 2016 – According to News BTC, U of C systems remain down after ransom was paid. Although the decryption keys were received from the hackers, restoring the systems is not an automatic process, thus it is quite time consuming. Unfortunately, it is unclear how long it will take before the college is back up and running as normal.
