By REBECCA RUTHERFORD, For the Los Alamos Daily PostThis week’s catch probably won’t land in your inbox, but it’s worth knowing about. A ransomware gang called BYOD says it broke into Vanderbilt University in Nashville. Worth noting – if true, it’s also the same group that claimed an attack on the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center earlier this fall, which makes it a little closer to home than a Tennessee campus might seem.On Monday, Nov. 9, Vanderbilt announced it was responding to an “active cybersecurity incident” that could affect its devices, systems and cloud services. The university told students and staff to shut down university devices and get off campus Wi-Fi. According to The Tennessean, students in the middle of assignments and exams moved to coffee shops near campus to keep working. Some students couldn’t register for spring classes, and the registration window closes this Friday – yikes!Vanderbilt restored Wi-Fi Monday night, and classes went on as scheduled. By Tuesday morning, email, Zoom, the Brightspace learning platform, the Okta login system and enrollment services were back online. Everything else stayed restricted. Inside Higher Ed asked the university what data was taken, whether it paid a ransom and when it was expected to be fully restored.BYOD posted a message claiming it has locked the university’s databases and stolen its “entire estate and research data.” The gang says that includes more than a million Social Security numbers, along with names, email addresses, phone numbers, and student and employee records. It also claims it took over the university’s domain controller. That’s the system that manages who can log in to what across a network, basically the keys to the kingdom.None of this has been confirmed. Ransomware gangs are known to exaggerate, because a scarier claim puts pressure on the victim to pay. Until Vanderbilt or investigators say otherwise, we don’t really know the full extent of the attack.The group is fairly new, showed up in September and has since claimed about 18 other breaches, including Michigan State University and UNM Health Sciences Center. According to Inside Higher Ed, the UNM attack disrupted patient care.Universities are hot targets. Students bring their own laptops and phones onto campus networks, IT is often split among departments, and schools keep huge amounts of personal data on students, employees, donors and research partners. Universities are about the most open environments an attacker can find because they are designed to be open.Vanderbilt isn’t alone. Princeton, UT San Antonio and the University of Illinois at Chicago have all reported disruptive incidents in the past year.For most readers, this is notable news rather than a situation that needs response. Still, a few habits apply whenever a big breach is in the headlines:If you’ve attended, worked at or applied to a university, assume your information is sitting in a database somewhere. Not a reason to panic, just a reason to keep your guard up.If you had any associate with them, expect breach-themed scams. After a big incident, criminals send emails and texts pretending to be the school or a “breach response team” and asking to confirm your information or click to check whether you were affected. Real notices won’t ask for your password or Social Security number. Go to the institution’s official website yourself, do not click the link.If you were involved, consider freezing your credit. It’s free with Equifax, Experian and TransUnion, and it’s the best protection against someone opening accounts with a stolen Social Security number. You can lift the freeze temporarily when you need to apply for credit.If you get an official breach notice, read it carefully and take any free credit monitoring it offers.The bigger lesson is that your data’s safety often depends on organizations that are out of your control. What you can control is how quickly you spot a scam when criminals try to cash in on someone else’s breach.Stay curious, stay skeptical, and think before you click. See you next week for another Catch of the Week.
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