TH-Wildau - News
Nationwide cyberattack against universities / Accounts will be unblocked
Update: 3. July, 3:10 p.m.: Accounts will be unblocked
Dear colleagues,
Dear students,
We are pleased that we can now communicate the following:
TH Wildau has received information from the Office of Domestic Intelligence Service that the release of blocked devices and accounts is possible again under certain conditions.
All staff members and students are asked to install an up-to-date virus scanner and firewall on their end devices. The university provides a campus licence for staff members via the University IT Centre website. Students will also find information on where to obtain free licences.
At no time has user data or the TH Wildau infrastructure been compromised. All emails sent to the relevant accounts during the lockdown will be available again once the licences have been activated.
For employees who work with terminals provided by the HRZ, the virus software will be updated centrally by the HRZ.
Blocked accounts will be unlocked until 04.07.2024 at 8:00 am. If you still have problems with your account at this time, please contact the HRZ support centre.
The University IT Centre would like to thank all staff members and students for their patience, support and understanding.
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Update: 3. July, 11:30 a.m.
Currently around 15 per cent of the user accounts of employees and students at TH Wildau are blocked.
The University‘s Computer Centre (HRZ) is examining the affected user accounts and operating systems forensically and forwards its findings to the authorities on an ongoing basis.
This way the HRZ supports the state authorities in finding clues that will allow the user accounts to be unblocked as quickly as possible.
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Update: 3. July, 9:35 a.m.
The university is in close contact with the relevant state authorities, in particular the Ministry of the Interior and the Office for the Protection of the Constitution of the State of Brandenburg. At present, there are no current statements from them on how to proceed. We ask for the understanding of all students and colleagues whose accounts are currently blocked. We continue to hope that a solution will be found soon.
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Update: 2. July, 3:30 p.m.
Dear staff members,
dear students,
On Friday, we received information from the IT service provider (CERT Computer Emergency Response Team) Brandenburg that a nationwide cyberattack is underway against universities in Germany, which is currently also affecting TH Wildau.
The most important thing is that our internal security measures are working.
Nevertheless, it is necessary to temporarily block a certain number of accounts today.
The employees or students concerned will then no longer have access to digital services at our university. These include, for example, e-mail, telephones, Webex, Moodle and Nextcloud. Nothing will change for all other accounts.
Students or employees who are affected by the lockdown are requested not to contact the University IT Centre. Our colleagues are working hard to minimise the incident and maintain normal operations within the university as far as possible.
Important:
The emails of the blocked accounts will not be lost, only access is currently not possible. The emails will be available again once they have been unblocked, including those that have been received in the affected account in the meantime.
Students who have questions about their examinations are asked to contact the respective Dean's Office:
- Dean's Office Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences
- Dean's Office Faculty of Business, Computing and Law
We will inform regularly when there are updates.
Further information will follow soon.