University cuts itself off from internet after mystery security snafu The University of Michigan has isolated itself from the internet but, hey, everything's fine! The institute's president on Tuesday published a letter to the school community thanking everyone for their patience as technical staff work to restore internet access following an undisclosed security incident. "The loss of internet …
“Cybersecurity tracker BetterCyber tweeted Monday that the hospital and health system websites were among several U.S. health care organization and hospital websites for which disturbed denial of service (DDoS) attacks were launched by the pro-Russian hacktivist group KillNet.”
a. Never heard of Cybersecurity tracker BetterCyber.
b. I don't believe it.
Guys! You need to pull this story. A single internet rando doesn't believe that your sources are legitimate.
The internet may be vast but t245t knows it all and if he's not heard of it it's not real. That's why he frequents a site who's sole purpose is to report new things its readers may not have heard about.
It's got to go.
Where's the report button?
Quote #1 "The school initially reported network troubles on Sunday and on Monday took the unusual step of shutting down network access..."
....but....
Quote #2: "...without wired or wireless access to the US school's network, relying on mobile devices with cellular connections and other external network services..."
So which was it: no access.....or access?
I think we should be told!
On-premise network down. Staff and students told to use direct 3G/4G/5G connections on (or via) their phones so that they could still access cloud services like Slack, Google, Microsoft 365, Zoom, etc etc.
It's 2023. This is basically now SOP in the event of an on-premise failure for most orgs....
University network has one internet connection - if that connection gets attacked the entire university network is attacked.
Individuals use their phones for a network connection - if one of the phones gets attacked that phone and whatever's been linked to is attacked. But assuming that the entire university intranet isn't connected to that one phone everyone else's phone connections are OK.
"Sunday afternoon, after careful evaluation of a significant security concern, we made the intentional decision to sever our ties to the internet," said Ravi Pendse, Chief Information Officer, Sol Bermann, Chief Information Security Officer, and Andy Palms, Executive Director of Infrastructure on Monday. "We took this action to provide our information technology teams the space required to address the issue in the safest possible manner."
Or they could just have said,
"We failed."
Which "other Michigan University" were you thinking of? Michigan State? Michigan Tech? Eastern Michigan? Central Michigan? Oakland? Western? Wayne State?
Those are just the public research universities.
(The wolverine is the mascot of U Michigan, because there probably aren't any wolverines in Michigan any more. The mascot of Michigan State is the Spartan, because there have never been Spartans in Michigan. This par for US universities in general, of course, though U Nebraska gets some credit for using "cornhusker", which at least used to be a real profession, and before that "bugeater", which is both possible and for US mainstream culture fairly hardcore. And U Kansas for "jayhawk", which is not a real bird but originated as a term to describe anti-slavery activists; that's kind of nice.)
Anteaters, Banana Slugs, Poets, Sage Hens How can one not get just a little confused? A guy in Grecian styled armor on a white horse does not lead out the football (American) at the school with the Spartan nickname but at one of rivals. AH college life where the major cares was getting the project done and exams.
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