Phishing attacks against German universities

The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution warns of a new wave of attacks against universities and research institutions.

At the moment, attacks by cyber groups “Silent Librarian” and “Mabna Institute” against various institutions are intensifying again. Universities are particularly affected.

Among other things, the attackers imitate various learning platform tools (such as Moodle) or library management tools. With phishing e-mails, in which they pretend to be university employees, the attackers try to lure the victims to fake login pages on supposedly internal systems. If the user enters his/her access data there, the attackers grab these in order to finally use them to access the resources of the universities.

Please watch out for suspicious emails with similar-sounding content. In some cases the mails were also written in English. Report the suspicious e-mail to your IT security officer and avoid opening the links or entering your access data on websites that you are not familiar with. You can find further information on dealing with suspicious or fraudulent e-mails on the website of the Information Security Office.