Software biz MathWorks is cleaning up a ransomware attack more than a week after it took down MATLAB, its flagship product used by more than five million people worldwide.
Yesterday MathWorks finally confirmed users’ suspicions that ransomware was behind the days-long outage. Its status page first indicated there were issues with “multiple applications” on May 18.
An IT manager at an engineering outfit who contacted The Register said their company’s struggle to acquire new paid-for licenses “was really hampering our projects.”
MathWorks issued regular updates to its status page, but until it confirmed the ransomware attack, the updates provided little in the way of actionable information, readers complained.
The company said in a statement: “MathWorks experienced a ransomware attack. We have notified federal law enforcement of this matter. The attack affected our IT systems. Some of our online applications used by customers became unavailable, and certain internal systems used by staff became unavailable, beginning on Sunday, May 18.
“We have brought many of these systems back online and are continuing to bring other systems back online with the assistance of cybersecurity experts.”
Full recovery is still some way off, with many apps and services remaining offline or with degraded functionality, but the majority of MATLAB’s features have now returned.
MATLAB is a highly popular software suite. The platform offers advanced functionality for tasks such as data analysis, algorithm development, data visualization, numerical analysis and computation, and more.
Simulink, a MATLAB-based environment used for modeling, simulating, and analyzing dynamic systems, is also affected.
MATLAB is increasingly used in classrooms, from grade school to university, as a learning and assessment tool. The outage came at the height of exam season, leaving many students without a crucial tool to submit their theses.
Many MATLAB users access the platform online, rather than a downloaded instance on their PC. Over on the MATLAB subreddit, students have complained about potentially missing deadlines as a result of the issues, and shared their workarounds.
For those who have MATLAB installed, turning off the computer’s internet connection before opening the software has worked in some select cases, users reported.
Others admitted they resorted to pirating the software to regain access.
One incensed Reddit user said: “I am done with MATLAB’s lack of explanation, so I just pirated it. I do have a genuine license, and since they can’t deliver the service I rightfully paid, I am going to pirate the hell out of it. I am also using a virtual machine just to be safe from malware.”
“My entire research is at a stage where I [cannot] do anything without MATLAB,” said another.
One of the main issues was that MathWorks’ licensing server was down (its Licensing Center is still offline at the time of writing), so web users couldn’t verify their license was valid to authenticate into the site. The License Center provides centralized access for managing customers’ existing licenses, while online licensing, which its status page says is back up and running, is the cloud-based alternative to a network license manager.
This is also the reason why some commercial customers escaped unscathed, since it’s common for these organizations to host their own MATLAB licensing server.
MATLAB Online is used a lot more in education settings, meaning large swathes of school and university students were impacted. However, the company status page shows this is now back online, as is the licensing server and MATLAB Grader, which is used for running student assessments.
Multiple updates on the MathWorks’ status page had readers pulling their hair out for more than the week, with most stating that the company was “continuing to investigate this issue.” Other updates added more apps and services to the growing list of those affected.
As of today, some users report being able to use MATLAB Online again. The status page shows Online is back up and running, but some still can’t authenticate.
The Register contacted a handful of universities whose students were affected by the outage to understand whether any extensions will be provided to those working to deadlines, or those who have exams soon, but none replied immediately.
We also asked MathWorks for more information, but it did not respond. ®
