The Cape Cod Community College suffered a massive cyber attack, the attackers steal college banking information and allegedly transfer $807,130 from College. The attack starts with a phishing email.
Cyber Criminals currently targeting various colleges and universities around the worlds through social engineering and malware attack on employees and students.
The attacks start with the phishing Email with an attachment that appeared to be sent from another college, the attachment is the malware dropper that bypasses antivirus software and compromised the systems.
College President John L. Cox said that malware is sophisticated than expected and spreads to other computer and entered in the Nickerson administration building.
The malware targeted the college’s financial transactions. It appears as though it overwrote the URL address for the college’s bank, TD Bank, creating a fake site that looked and functioned like the financial institution,” Cox said to Cape Cod Times.
Cape Cod Community College officials hope to recover “most, if not all” of the $807,130 taken through cybertheft @Cmccormickcct https://t.co/OCFzHRdH4Q
— Cape Cod Times (@capecodtimes) December 11, 2018
Hackers also managed to make fake phone calls and trick the employees to approve the face transactions, they attempted 12 such transactions to steal $807,130 and the TD Bank recognized three as unusual and stopped them.
The bank managed to block such three fraudulent transactions and recovered $278,887 till date. Now the college working with FBI and TD to recover the funds. College confirmed none of the students and employees personal information is compromised.
“This attack on our College’s security demonstrates the power and danger of modern cybercrime. Despite ongoing cybersecurity training and continuous upgrades to the College’s network security, those with the power to execute a sophisticated malware attack found a way to do so,” Cox said.
The college has replaced all infected hard drives and will continue to install next-generation endpoint protection software across the campus, Cox said.
Cape Cod Community College leaders told faculty they are confident they will recover “most, if not all” of the $807,130 taken through cybertheft.
