University of Texas forced to take systems offline in San Antonio after cyberattack

One of the largest universities in Texas is facing a wide range of disruptions following a cyberattack announced on Monday morning. 

The University of Texas at San Antonio, which serves 40,000 students across six campuses, said its IT team identified threat activity on its academic campus over the weekend and took some systems, including phones, offline in response. 

Classes for many students begin on Wednesday, and the disruptions threaten to snarl systems people use to sign up for courses and submit payments for services. 

Michael Schnabel, the organization’s chief technology officer, said in a statement that the threat activity was detected at the edge of the university’s network and was contained before it reached “core systems and University Technology Solutions.” The university did not respond to questions about what was impacted. 

“At this time, our ongoing investigation has found no evidence that university data was accessed or exfiltrated as a result of this activity,” Schnabel said. “With classes beginning this Wednesday, we recognize how important, reliable access to university systems and services is for our students, faculty and staff. Our teams are working with great care to ensure that our technology environment is both available and secure as we begin the new academic year.”

In light of the outages, the school said the deadline for student payments was extended to Friday and several other changes were made to the wait lists for courses. 

Late on Monday, the university said it planned for all students and teachers to reset their passwords but in a Tuesday update, they warned that the password reset effort was experiencing delays. 

No hacking group has taken credit for the attack.

Cybercriminals have repeatedly targeted universities at the beginning and end of school years in an effort to force organizations to pay exorbitant ransoms. In May, universities across the U.S. were forced to delay final exams following a damaging cyberattack on a critical education software provider. 

Other large state universities like the University of Oklahoma, Stanford and the University of Michigan faced ransomware attacks following holiday breaks. The University of Pennsylvania had its email system disrupted in October during a cybersecurity incident while Columbia and Harvard Universities both faced attack last year.