At least a dozen supercomputers across Europe have shut down after cyber-attacks tried to take control of them.<\/p>\n
A pan-European supercomputing group says they seem to have tried to use the machines to mine cryptocurrency.<\/p>\n
“A security exploitation” disabled access to the Archer supercomputer, at the University of Edinburgh, on 11 May.<\/p>\n
Staff said they were working with the National Cyber Security Centre to restore the system, which had recently installed a pandemic modelling tool.<\/p>\n
“We now believe this to be a major issue across the academic community as several computers have been compromised in the UK and elsewhere in Europe,” the team said.<\/p>\n
The NCSC said: “We are aware of this incident and are providing support.<\/p>\n
“The NCSC works with the academic sector to help it improve its security practices and protect its institutions from threats.”<\/p>\n
Also on 11 May, another attack shut down five supercomputers in Germany.<\/p>\n
Others followed elsewhere in Germany in the following days, as well as in Switzerland, and reportedly Barcelona.<\/p>\n
They exploited an Secure Shell (SSH) connection, which academic researchers use to log in to the system remotely.<\/p>\n
And once inside, the attackers appear to have deployed cryptocurrency-mining malware.<\/p>\n
The security team at the European Group Infrastructure foundation said: “A malicious group is currently targeting academic data centres for CPU [central processing unit] mining purposes.<\/p>\n
“The attacker is hopping from one victim to another using compromised SSH credentials.”<\/p>\n
Jamie Akhtar, chief executive of UK security company Cybersmart, said: “Universities are home to some of the most advanced research projects in the world across many disciplines – including computer science – but they are also notoriously vulnerable to attack if they are connected to the wider university network.”<\/p>\n
Source: bbc.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"