Cyber security breach leaks military secrets

The number of cyber security breaches at a range of British university institutions have leave to sensitive information being linked to criminals, including details of research into military missiles.

According to The Times newspaper, data security breaches at Oxford, Warwick and University College London have doubled in the past 24 months to 1,152 in the year between 2016 and 2017, with cyber criminals gaining access to sensitive information concerning scientific, engineering and medical research.

Specifically, data revealed that the University of Oxford experienced 515 cases of unauthorised access to its internal accounts in 2016, with University College London suffering 57 cyber attacks in the past 12 months.

Warwick was one of the universities worst hit by the attacks, with files targeted by criminals containing medical records and military designs for secret 'stealth fabrics'.

Commenting on the newly revealed figures, Carsten Maple, head of computing and director of cyber security at Warwick University, stated that the hackers were targeting sensitive intellectual property that is the result of years of development by the university's experts.

Maple said: "If someone can get that very quickly, that’s good for them. Certainly somebody might attack a university and then provide that information to a nation state."

Dr Anton Grashion, head of security practice at Cylance, also commented on the statistics, stating that failures and gaps in their IT expertise could be the cause of the apparently increased interest of cyber criminals in higher education centres.

Similarly, with all universities being increasingly encouraged to provide open and easy to use networks for their students, their facilities are considered an "easily accessible" target.

Dr Grashion said: "Their network environments are some of the most challenging networks to manage, with usually smaller security and staffing budgets."