Kochi University of Technology: an attacker entered several university servers via a research server and collected staff email addresses and more

1. 2023-08-07

   From this day, research servers run by faculty members were broken into and, through them, the university web server and mail server were also accessed without authorization. [1]

2. 2023-08-13

   It detected unauthorized access to servers in the corporation network via a research server run by a faculty member. Suspicious programs had been written and staff business accounts were misused. [1] [2]

3. 2023-08-14

   It sent a first report to the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology and also reported to the Kochi Prefectural Police. [1]

4. 2023-09-04

   It announced the case, judging that it cannot rule out that personal data was viewed. [1] [2]

What the attacker collected is 991 staff email addresses (including former staff, some with names) and 808 email addresses of companies and organizations that had posted job offers (some with phone numbers). In addition, the received mail of one of the seven misused business accounts held lists of student data that were temporarily viewable (name, email address and assignment grades for 98 people, and name, student ID and laboratory for 56). No harm from misuse has been confirmed. [1]