Students targeted by hackers in sophisticated cyber attack

Hundreds of students at Lancaster University have had their personal details hacked in a sophisticated cyber attack.

Officials at Lancaster University said the information had been used to send bogus invoices to potential applicants.

The National Crime Agency (NCA) said the university had suffered a “compromise of its systems” which resulted in  “a very small number” of student records, phone numbers and ID documents being accessed.

The university said it became aware of a breach on Friday and has been working to secure its systems.

It said the data included names, addresses, phone numbers and emails, linked to students who had applied to join the university in 2019 and 2020.

A spokesman said: “Lancaster University has been subject to a sophisticated and malicious phishing attack which has resulted in breaches of student and applicant data.

“The matter has been reported to law enforcement agencies and we are now working closely with them.

“We acted as soon as we became aware that Lancaster was the source of the breach on Friday and established an incident team to handle the situation.

“It was immediately reported to the Information Commissioner’s Office.

“Since Friday we have focused on safeguarding our IT systems and identifying and advising students and applicants who have been affected.

“This work of our incident team is ongoing as is the investigation by law enforcement agencies.”

An NCA spokesman said: “A criminal investigation led by the NCA’s National Cyber Crime Unit is now under way, and it would not be appropriate to comment further at this stage.”

A spokesman for the Information Commissioner’s Office said it had received a report from the university and would assess the information provided.

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