UMT Lahore comes under ransomware attack

ISLAMABAD: The University of Management and Technology (UMT) Lahore was recently hit by a highly advanced ransomware attack, it emerged on Wednesday.

The UMT, is a private university in Punjab’s provincial capital Lahore, is facing difficulty to access different operations such as courses registration, fee challan generation, attendance and grading transcript, sources claimed.

Ransomware is a type of malware that locks and encrypts a victim’s data, files, devices or systems, rendering them inaccessible and unusable until the attacker receives a ransom payment.

Sources said that the university data centre was damaged by ransomware virus which impacted system and operations.

The IT team has communicated to its management that it is working hard to save and cleanse the data affected by the attack.

The PRO UMT Lahore Ali Raza told HUM News English that “I will update you after getting details from the department concerned”.

But no further response was received till the filing of this story.

Globally, ransomware groups have increased their attacks against governments, specific high-profile organizations, or selective groups of people within an organization.

This was also disclosed by a multinational cybersecurity and anti-virus provider company Kaspersky in its latest research which showed a surge in the number of targeted ransomware groups globally by 30% from 2022 to 2023.

In parallel to this increase, the number of victims of targeted ransomware attacks spiked by 70% within the same time period, it said.

Kaspersky researchers closely monitored about 60 targeted ransomware groups in 2023, compared to about 46 groups in 2022, and discovered incidents that indicated collaboration between targeted ransomware groups.

In some cases, groups known for trading access points into corporate networks and systems, sold initial points of entry to advanced ransomware groups that are capable of launching more sophisticated attacks.

 Since cybercriminals have to cross multiple stages to launch a targeted ransomware attack, such collaborations allow them to save time and go straight into network reconnaissance or infection.

In 2023, marking its seventh year as a key contributor to the “no more ransom” initiative, Kaspersky’s free decryption tools were downloaded more than 360,000 times, aiding data recovery for over 2 million users affected by ransomware.

However, despite these significant accomplishments, ransomware payments globally surpassed $1.1 billion in 2023, marking an unprecedented high.

 “Targeted ransomware groups are very persistent and have a huge appetite for extortion. For example, if a victim refuses to pay ransom, the cybercriminals often threaten to make the stolen data public,” the research report said.

“In some cases, these cybercriminals also filed GDPR or SEC complaints in certain regions against the victim organizations for breaking data protection laws,” said Maher Yamout, Senior Security Researcher at Kaspersky.