University of Virginia the latest to suffer Hack Attack — The attack allegedly originated from China.
This weekend the University of Virginia had to shut down some of its online systems to respond to a cyber-attack.
UVa has now also joined the league of universities that have already experienced a data breach lately.
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Other universities that recently reported about cyber-attacks on their online networks include University of Connecticut’s School of Engineering and Penn State’s College of Engineering and College of the Liberal Arts.
Officials stated that UVa’s cyber-attack was a targeted one in which the email accounts of two of their employees got breached. The work of these employees was linked with China.
Reports suggest that the UConn attack and one of the attacks on Penn State also were launched from China.
UVa is taking conventional steps like notifying probable targets and research partners about the data breach and informing FBI.
There is, however, no direct evidence available that the information was stolen, but the university officials recommended that it was a good idea to reset the passwords.
Penn State, UVa and Anthem Inc. all were using the same cyber-security firm called Mandiant and all have been allegedly attacked by China.
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This is not the first time when the university of Virginia has been hacked. In the past, one of the Anonymous hackers breached into the university’s servers and leaked staffs’ usernames, emails, addresses and phone numbers.
China has been a major suspect in some of the major cyber-attacks in recent times such as the U.S Office of Personnel Management in April and in January the Anthem Inc. hack.
In May 2013, Chinese hackers were blamed for gaining access to a sensitive weaponry system, stealing US Secret weapons designs.
In May 2013 again, Chinese hackers were blamed for hacking the official website of U.S. Labor department and installing malware on the department’s servers.
However, in July 2015, the U.S. government accused China of breaking into the system of the United Airlines. The breach occurred by the end of May or the early part of June 2015.
At the moment there is no solid evidence of Chinese involvement in the UVa breach, but keeping in mind that the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is based in Langley, Virginia may have attracted the hackers to find some valuable information on military and security professionals or their families.
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