U of M says 9th malicious email sent Thursday night

The University of Monctonsays a ninthmalicious email was sent tothe campus community Thursday night, reaching almost 2,000 students and staff.

RaymondThberge, president and vicechancellor of the university, is calling themaliciousemail campaigna form of cyber terrorism.

"Our objective is to ensure safety on our campuses and to stop this campaign of degrading and unwanted emails," he said.

The university administration helda news conference Fridaymorning to discuss the malicious email campaign, whichstarted last weekend with a female student as its target. The imagessent out were sexual in nature.

University of Moncton chancellor calls attacks "cyberterrorism"

8 years ago

Duration 0:32

The University of Moncton says a ninth malicious email was sent to the campus community Thursday night.The university said an investigation was able to determine that this is a matter of identity theft. The institution's data and the personal information of the university's students and staff are secure.

This is a type of cyber terrorismand it's never a good thing to give into these kinds of attacks.-RaymondThberge, University of Moncton president

The university said progress has been made in its efforts to counteract the tacticsof the individualbehind maliciousemails.

"Teams in our IT department have been working non-stop keeping watch in order to intercept the messages coming from this individual," Thberge said."The messages are difficult to block because the perpetrator uses several identities."

Earlier this week, police said they had identified a possible suspect in what appeared to be a case of "revenge porn" but they had notlocated him.

At the newsconference, the university spoke of two servers, one traced back to an IP address in Europe.

The campaign provoked students tocallon the University of Moncton to shut down the campus email system.

But Thberge said the university, which has an enrolment of 3,959 students at the Moncton campus, will stand firm in its refusal to shut down the system.

"If we were to freeze allemailsit will mean the perpetrator will have succeeded in stopping us from operating," he said. "This is a type of cyber terrorismand it's never a good thing to give into these kinds of attacks."

Premier Brian Gallant said Friday morning, the province is doing everything it can to help the universityandRCMP.

He said Donald Arseneault, the minister of post-secondary education, training and labour, has been in talks with the university, offering support as a government with cyber security or whatever else is needed.

"We'll do everything we can to support and certainly anything that we can [do to] help in terms of cyber security, we will do," he said.

'It happens all over the world'

AndrLee, general director of technologies at the university,said the malicious emails were unfortunate for the victim but such activity didn't surprise the IT department.

"Ithappens all over the world, it happens every week in universities in North America in a different form," said Lee.

24 hour help line set up for U de M students

8 years ago

Duration 0:44

Services are being made available to help students in dealing with the recent string of cyber attacks on the the U de M email system.For public safety reasons, the strategiesused by the department for intercepting the messages will not be shared.

"Thisis something that all institutions are vulnerable to, not only education institutions,it's a public security matter."

The university is also setting up a 24-hour, toll-free psychological help linethis afternoon for students.

The university said this is being established to support members of the university community on all three campuses, Edmundston, Moncton and Shippagan.

Theservice is in addition to the one announced earlier this week for members of the university community.