A hacker is said to have leaked hundreds of thousands of data from the systems of the Hogeschool van Arnhem en Nijmegen (HAN) after the university refused to pay a hacker ransom. That writes RTL Nieuws, which says it has been in contact with the hacker.
HAN says it cannot yet confirm the leak of the data. “But it is in line with expectations,” says a spokesperson for the university of applied sciences. “You often see them selling or publishing this kind of data, so it’s one of the scenarios we’re considering.”
HAN experts are working together with an ICT company to find out whether the data actually ended up on the street.
Information from contact forms
According to RTL Nieuws, this concerns data from (former) students, employees and people who would have shown an interest in HAN. Most of the information comes from completed contact forms. According to RTL, there are names, e-mail addresses, dates of birth, addresses and telephone numbers on the street.
Passwords have also been leaked. “But as far as we know now, these are outdated passwords,” says HAN. “It is therefore not about current data from the HANaccount.” This is the account with which, among other things, students can log in to the computer systems of HAN.
Last week it was announced that the HAN was extorted by the hacker, who, according to RTL Nieuws, operated under the name ‘masterballz’. “HAN will not respond to these extortion attempts,” the university of applied sciences said at the time.