Over 20,000 affected as CUSCS falls victim to cyber attack

The School of Continuing and Professional Studies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUSCS) fell victim to hackers in June, affecting about 20,870 Moodle users.

CUSCS said Thursday the Moodle online learning platform has been hacked on June 3.

The information involved included the names, email addresses and student numbers of 20,870 Moodle accounts, including employees, part-time tutors, students, graduates and some visitors.

The college stated that it had deactivated the related account, reset the password, moved the online learning platform apart from the relevant server, and strengthened security measures to block the account after three unsuccessful login attempts.

The college has also established a crisis management team composed of the dean, deputy dean, information technology services director, administrative director and communications and public relations director to assess the risks.

CUHK has also been notified of the incident, CUSCS said.

The information technology security consultant appointed by the college has immediately conducted an investigation and found no large amount of data leaked, and the relevant information did not appear on the dark web.

The college has also reported to the police, and the university has notified the Office of the Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data (PCPD) in accordance with established procedures.

PCPD said Thursday that it has received a complaint over the incident.