Vanderbilt University has asked students, faculty and staff to disconnect their devices from the campus network after a suspected ransomware attack disrupted university systems on Monday. A ransomware group calling itself BYOD has claimed responsibility and alleged it stole data belonging to more than one million people associated with the university.
Students using university-issued devices reported seeing multiple ransomware messages appear on their computer desktops. Others reported pop-up notifications linked to the attack. She added that Vanderbilt University Information Technology (VUIT) was working to contain the incident. The group alleged it had obtained Social Security numbers, names, email addresses, phone numbers, student and employee records, research data and other information from Vanderbilt’s network. It also claimed to have compromised the university’s domain controller infrastructure.
In a separate university notification cited by Axios , Vanderbilt instructed users to “SHUT DOWN YOUR DEVICE IMMEDIATELY” and warned against investigating or attempting to fix the issue independently to reduce further security risks. “Everyone is following VU protocols and waiting for further instruction,” Blair School of Music Dean Melissa Rose told students in a message shared by the student newspaper The Vanderbilt Hustler . Some files stored on university systems were converted into an encrypted “.byod” format which made them inaccessible, according to the Nashville Scene . One researcher said they had to rely on personal backups after university-hosted research became unavailable.
The same ransomware group has previously claimed attacks against Michigan State University and the University of New Mexico Health System, according to Axios.
