Innsbruck Meduni continues to hold back on hacker attack
The Medical University of Innsbruck continued to be cautious at a press conference on Thursday about the hacker attack last weekend. Vice Rector Manuela Groß did not want to provide any information about the nature of the cyber attack. “There is currently no evidence that data was stolen,” she said. The IT expert Lothar Renner, who was called in, admitted that it was still unclear whether the attack had already been fired in full.
Groß reported that “the recovery can be completed in the next few days”, but there are still a few things to be seen. The university informed the data protection authority and the State Criminal Police Office began their investigation. “I was able to return to normal work as early as Tuesday,” she said. On Tuesday and Wednesday, the 3,400 students and 2,200 employees were given new passwords.
Via end device
Renner, who serves as managing director at Cisco EMEAR, informed that the attack was via an infected endpoint. However, the details cannot be given due to the investigation, and they also do not want to “offer the hacker a platform”. However, it remained unclear whether it was a cyber attack in which data was encrypted and money or bitcoins were demanded for it, or an attack in which the infrastructure was destroyed without demands for money. Another is that access was possible via a social profile or that random ransomware – i.e. malware – was responsible for the collapse of the systems. “We’re still in the process of analyzing that,” said Renner.