Truman State University slowly recovering from ‘cybersecurity virus attack’

Truman State University in Kirksville, Missouri said it is in the process of recovering from a “cybersecurity virus attack” last week that forced it to shut down the campus network and order all school-issued devices to be turned off.

The school – which has existed in various forms since 1867 and is named after former President Harry Truman – said it was able to start bringing some network servers, as well as campus-wide internet, back online on Tuesday.

They urged anyone with a school-issued device to keep it turned off until the IT staff is able to “install the necessary security software on all Truman State-issued Windows-based devices.”

“Over the next several days, users will be prompted to change their password. The Truman State intranet is now back online, which is a key step to restoring many network capabilities.” The school added that internet should be available as of 9 a.m. on Wednesday, with Google Suite and the education software BlackBoard following shortly afterwards.

Online classes remain canceled until Thursday and employee email is likely to be available by the end of the week. In-person classes were not impacted but professors were unable to access digital classroom tools.

IT “will be closely monitoring services … and intermittent outages may occur,” they wrote.

No group has claimed the attack on Truman State University and the school did not respond to requests for comment about whether it involved ransomware.

Allan Liska, senior security architect at the cybersecurity firm Recorded Future, said this year is on pace to set a record for the number of ransomware incidents affecting colleges and universities. The Record is an editorially independent unit of Recorded Future.

There have already been 50 publicly reported ransomware attacks against schools, he said, with 185 reported in all of 2022.