According to Swiss media reports, several Swiss universities have become victims of cyber attacks. Strangers penetrated the systems of the universities by means of spying emails and branched off wage payments, as the public prosecutor told the media.
The hackers are said to have gained access to the network of the universities through phishing mails, which asked members to enter their data and changed recipient accounts for wage payments.
The University Of Basel Is Affected
Spokesman of the university told the media that the University of Basel suffered financial damage due to the attack several weeks ago. The University of Zurich reported similar attempts, but they were noticed in good time and were prevented. In addition, the cyber criminals hacked with forged emails the accounts of employees. Accordingly, at least three universities in Switzerland fell victim to the hackers.’The university adapted the internal IT in such a way that hacking access in this form will no longer be possible”,the report quotes the spokesman for the University of Basel.
According to the Basel prosecutor’s office, other Swiss universities are also affected by the attacks. They are investigating the cases. The prosecutor’s office says that the cyber criminals used phishing to obtain the access to the university network. There they would have changed the accounts for the wage payments. So far, the perpetrators could not be identified.
Fake Mails Sent From Attacked Accounts
In addition to the phishing, in which the criminals obtain user information by means of a vulnerability, the perpetrators also sent fake mails from hacked employees. The organization described this in a circular mail this week, with which it warned universities of the hacker attacks. With the forged employee mails, the wage payments were redirected to third party data at the end of the month and some of them were transferred abroad from there. It is said that several universities were defrauded of large amounts of money.
