Osaka Metropolitan University cancels classes after suspected ransomware attack

What happened

It has not identified the attackers or said whether it received a ransom demand. Osaka Metropolitan University said on Tuesday that the outage left its internal network, email and a range of administrative and academic systems unavailable.

OMU said it believes ransomware (software that locks up files and demands payment) caused the disruption and is investigating the attack with outside cybersecurity specialists. The outage affected systems used for academic administration, educational support, financial accounting, payroll, human resources and library services, as well as the university's websites and internal network.

About 500 servers stopped operating following the attack, Japanese media reported , citing university officials at a press conference Monday. The reports said information belonging to at least 130,000 current and former students, faculty members and others associated with the university may have been exposed. It has reported the incident to Japan's data protection authority and other government agencies.

Key facts

• The — reports: said information belonging to at least 130,000 current and former students, faculty members and others associated with the university may have been exposed