The University faced a cyberattack yesterday (20/02), which is affected internet and services across multiple UK higher education institutions.

Students at various colleges were notified of the attack, which affected access to IT services such as CamSIS and Moodle.

An internal email revealed that the incident was a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack, described as a “a deliberate flood of data generated by a large number of compromised machines on the internet”.

Multiple UK universities were targeted by the attack alongside Cambridge, all of whom use the Janet Network, a mass data-sharing platform for researchers.

Anonymous Sudan, a DDoS group, have reportedly claimed responsibility for the attack, stating on its Telegram channel: “Reason for the attack: UK’s unconditional support for Israel and complicity on the ongoing genocide in Gaza as well as bombing campaigns on Yemen.”

The attack came as the University Library’s electronic legal deposit systems are currently being restored, following a cyberattack on the British Library, which runs the system, last October.

Cambridge has told Varsity that the attack has been resolved. A spokesperson said: “University Information Services (UIS) believes the intermittent network access issues have been resolved and are monitoring the situation closely.”

“Normal service should now be restored for centrally managed IT services. There may be some residual issues this morning, including delays to email delivery,” they said.

“If users are still experiencing network access issues, please ask them to contact the UIS Service Desk. You can view the status of UIS’ services at https://status.uis.cam.ac.uk/, where you can also subscribe to receive email or SMS alerts,” the spokesperson concluded.