Swinburne contains cyber security incident

KUCHING: Swinburne University of Technology Sarawak Campus (Swinburne Sarawak) is currently responding to a cyber security incident.

On Aug 30, the university was listed as a victim on the RansomHub ransomware gang’s dark web leak site which claimed to have stolen 366 gigabytes of data.

Swinburne Sarawak said its team has taken immediate actions to contain the incident and the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) of the Malaysia National Cyber Security Agency has been notified.

“Our team has been working quickly to resolve the matter and minimise the impact of the incident since then. The university’s core business system has been fully recovered with no further impact to our operations,” it said in a statement on Wednesday (Sept 4).

Swinburne Sarawak said they are working with specialists to ascertain further details of the incident and complete forensic investigations.

“Our investigations to date have confirmed that some passport scans, letters of completion and student applications were stolen. It is currently not clear how many students or which students are impacted. Support services are being made available to our students and staff to assist them during this time,” it said.

At the same time, Swinburne Sarawak stressed that they are committed to strengthening their cyber security measures to prevent similar incidents from reoccurring.

“Swinburne Sarawak’s IT systems are independent of Swinburne’s systems in Australia, and Swinburne’s Australian campuses are not impacted by this incident,” it added.