Five college campuses in Louisiana later pulled the plug on their Internet service Friday after discovering “an indicator of a compromise,” according to three of the schools.
The University of New Orleans, LSU AgCenter, Southern University at Shreveport, Nunez Community College, and River Parishes Community College have proactively moved to shutting down their campus internet to “operationalize security features.
Identical messages regarding the security threat were posted on the UN’s Twitter account, Southern Shreveport’s Facebook page, and the Nunez website. All five schools were identified in the message.
“We are working closely with the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness and the Louisiana State Police to address the potential threat,” the statement said.
There was no indication of how long schools would leave their internet networks down.
The LSU AgCenter website was unavailable late Friday night, although it wasn’t immediately known if this was the result of the cyber threat.
A cybersecurity breach at Southeastern Louisiana University sparked a state police investigation in late February. In the weeks that followed, students and faculty were unable to use the online learning platform Moodle, and access to online payments and WiFi was only restored last week.
In all of the above cases, universities have stopped labeling them as cyberattacks. Nor have they attributed them to ransomware, where the perpetrator demands compensation from the victim in order to restore or regain access to their system.
The university has discovered an indicator of a compromise, prompting us to proactively shut down our campus internet system to operationalize security features. A total of five colleges and universities conduct similar activities: UNO, LSU Agricultural Center, Nunez (cont.) pic.twitter.com/Z9RO30ANZp
— University of New Orleans (@UofNO) March 24, 2023
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