UvA and HvA are currently investigating which areas of their ICT environment are affected. The institutions have decided to proactively shut down certain systems for a short period of time in order to limit the impact on education and research as much as possible.

The Dutch Research Council (NWO) also suffered a cyber attack last Sunday, as a result of which it had to shut down its entire network indefinitely. And one year ago, Maastricht University’s ICT system suffered a similar attack. The university was forced to pay nearly 200,000 euros in ransom to regain access to its servers.