Two years were not enough for Florida International University (FIU) to correct its mistakes. In May 2020 he was among the victims of the “Blackbaud data breach”, these days the university is grappling with a new data theft.
In our 2021 article on the “Blackbaud data breach” we told what the real impact had been for thousands of universities, colleges and K12s around the world. Among the 466 entities we have listed was also the FIU with 922 * certified citizens residing in Washington State involved in the data theft.
ALPHV (aka Black Cat) ransomware group has released a note with some screen shots of stolen data at the Florida International University, cybercriminals claim to have stolen a total of 1.2 TB of sensitive documents and a 300 GB SQL database .
According to some research carried out by the Kaspersky laboratories, Black Cat would be connected to some affiliates of old ransomware groups already known in the news: REvil and BlackMatter. According to an analysis carried out by the Cisco Talos laboratories, the group would also be linked to some affiliates of the infamous DarkSide group, infamous for having hit the Colonial Pipeline Company in Texas in May 2021.
The new data loss involving Florida International University is nothing more than an exact photocopy of what happened last February at the University of Detroit Mercy. Recall that the university in Michigan was also involved in the * “Blackbaud data breach”.
On April 8, Black Cat claimed the exfiltration from the servers of Florida International University of sensitive material of students, teaching staff as well as financial and accounting documents, SSN of the American institution.
Among the screen shots published by Black Cat is a spreadsheet (OpenOffice) from FIU’s Applied Research Center (ARC), a research organization specializing in solving real-world problems through multidisciplinary research.
SuspectFile wrote an email to Florida International University ARC asking for a statement on the matter, at the time of publication of this article we have not received any responses.
We will continue to follow the story by updating it in case of new details.