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The University of Sydney has posted a notice on its website warning of the possible impact of a third-party data breach.
The notice, posted late on 31 August, warns that details of a “limited number” of students may have been exposed, though the notice does not say who the third-party provider is, or in what capacity they work with the university.
The affected students appear to be limited to a small number of those who have recently applied or been enrolled and are further limited to international students.
“At this stage, our provisional findings indicate that no domestic students, staff, alumni or donors’ data has been affected,” the university’s notice says.
The incident took place on a single platform, according to the university, and “immediate steps” were taken to contain the breach. The university has also – so far – not seen any evidence of the misuse of “critical information”.
However, there are at present no details of what exact data has been compromised and the university is continuing to investigate the incident.
“We are working with all parties to best support and protect any students and prospective students whose information may have been compromised,” the university said.
“We are still determining the nature of the information that may have been accessed,” the university added.
“The university takes its responsibility to protect the data of our community very seriously, and we have notified relevant cyber security authorities as well as the NSW Privacy Commissioner.”
Third-party hacks have affected a number of Australian organisations in recent months. The MoveIT and Barracuda email gateway hacks affected businesses and government agencies alike, and most recently, a data breach at telemarketing company Pareto Phone saw data pertaining to dozens of Australian charities leaked on the darknet, in some cases including donor information.
So far Cyber Security Connect has not seen any evidence of the data being posted on leak sites at this time.
David Hollingworth has been writing about technology for over 20 years, and has worked for a range of print and online titles in his career. He is enjoying getting to grips with cyber security, especially when it lets him talk about Lego.
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