TU/e cyberattack update: recovery of network and systems goes as planned

The work to restore Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e)'s Internet network and systems is going as planned, stated the university in an update. As previously announced, classes will resume on Monday, and the schedules for the three upcoming weeks of teaching will be published tomorrow (Friday) afternoon.

Last Sunday, the university took its entire digital network offline following a cyber attack which made inaccessible all TU/e digital infrastructure. As a result, the university canceled classes for the current week, moving the whole academic calendar by a week.

Patrick Groothuis, vice president of TU/e: "We are aware that many students are concerned about the consequences of the adjustments. Our focus is now mainly on restarting and replanning education, but at the same time we are making an inventory of what issues there are for students and how we can help them. We are in contact with the University Council education committee, the Federation of Study Associations (FSE) and the umbrella organizations of the student associations about this. The interests of students are a top priority to us, and we will do our utmost to find solutions for as many issues as possible.  For instance, in quartile 3, we are going to take studyability into account, because the quartile is one week shorter. And we are also going to look closely at other student concerns. We will come back to this as soon as we can.”

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Cyber attacks affecting other institutions as well

Meanwhile, due to an extensive DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attack, network organization SURF's systems have also been affected. University of Maastricht, Fontys, and Zuyd University of Applied Sciences have also been affected by a new DDoS attack on their shared network as they share a common network via SURF. The educational institutions have formed crisis teams.

Following this attack, the institutions had slow or no access to the Internet at all. In an update, the company said that the attack "stopped shortly after 2 pm, and the network seems to be stable again." Internet connections and access to SURF's network for the academic institutes involved are available again. According to SURF, "the combination of measures taken together with our partners will limit the impact of another attack. Unfortunately, we cannot guarantee this."