The Medusa ransomware gang has claimed a cyberattack on the Open College of Cyprus (OUC), which triggered extreme disruptions of the group’s operations.

OUC is an internet college based mostly in Nicosia, Cyprus, that gives distant studying. It presents 30 higher-level education schemes to 4,200 college students and participates in numerous scientific analysis actions.

Final week, the college printed an announcement a couple of cyberattack that had occurred on March 27, that resulted in a number of central companies and demanding methods going offline.

“As a precaution, entry is just not supplied to the College’s eLearning Platform, Employment Portal, the Portal for functions of potential college students, and different important methods that primarily concern the College neighborhood,” reads the OUC announcement.

“The place there are deadlines for the submission of assignments, extensions will probably be supplied by the tutorial workers,” the college stated.

Immediately, the Medusa ransomware group posted OUC on its information leak website, giving the institute 14 days to answer its ransom calls for. The hackers requested for $100,000.

Nevertheless, the menace group set the identical value for each deleting the information in addition to for promoting it to an occasion. For $10,000, the hackers say they might delay publishing the information by in the future.

Knowledge samples have additionally been printed, to show that their claims are actual. The recordsdata embody pupil lists with personally identifiable data, monetary particulars of analysis contractors, and extra.

Not like different ransomware actors, Medusa doesn’t contemplate training organizations off-limits. Initially of March, the gang focused the Minneapolis Public Colleges district, demanding a ransom of $1 million.

For extra particulars on the profile of Medusa ransomware, take a look at our detailed analysis of the menace actor, which covers methods, techniques, and procedures (TTPs).

Cyprus underneath “cyber-pressure”

The small island nation within the japanese Mediterranean has suffered from a collection of high-impact cyber incidents because the starting of 2023, essentially the most notable being a catastrophic assault in opposition to the net portal of the nationwide land registry on March 8.

The assault froze registrations value €150 million and compelled the state group to an prolonged outage which might solely be resolved by building a new portal at a special deal with, arrange with restricted performance greater than two weeks later.

Native media additionally reported that the identical hackers tried to breach the College of Cyprus and in addition the Ministry of Protection, however each entities managed to dam the intrusions by detecting them early and isolating the impacted methods.

H/T: Brett Callow