Cambridge University hit by DDoS attack

Anonymous Sudan claims it also hit the University of Manchester

The University of Cambridge was hit on Monday by a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack which flooded its servers and disrupted internet access and services.

According to Varsity, students were notified by email of the attack, which disrupted access to services including education platform Moodle and CamSIS, the university's system for handling student information, records and transactions.

It is not known whether the DDoS attack was used a cover to steal information.

In a post on X, The Clinical School Computing Service said on Monday that it was working with the Joint Information Systems Committee (Jisc) to restore services. In a later post at 8.45 am on Tuesday it said the disruption appeared to be "largely over."

The University's IT Service page shows CamSIS to be operating normally at the time of writing (11.30 am) although Moodle and Lecture capture (Panopto) are still "degraded".

Other educational establishments which use the JANET academic backbone network operated by Jisc were also reportedly affected, among them the University of Manchester.

The hacking group Anonymous Sudan claimed responsibility for attacking the universities of Cambridge and Manchester, citing the UK's support for Israel.

Despite its name and apparent hacktivist activities in support of Muslim causes, security analysts believe Anonymous Sudan to be a Russian outfit. It emerged in January 2023 and has claimed multiple DDoS attacks on organisations and companies including Microsoft.

In a screenshot circulating on social media, purportedly from its Telegram channel, the group claims it attacked the universities of Cambridge and Manchester because of the UK's support for Israel and bombing of Yemen.