Security News > 2021 > February > Ransomware attack takes out UK Research and Innovation's Brussels networking office

UK Research and Innovation, the British government's science and research organisation, has temporarily turned off a couple of its web-facing services after an apparent ransomware attack.

In a statement issued last week while everyone was gazing goggle-eyed at the European Union's vaccine export struggles, UKRI said data from its Brussels-based UK Research Office and an extranet service had been "Encrypted by a third party".

In contrast, common-or-garden personal data - as might be collected by a government-sponsored networking organisation - includes such things as your name, phone number, email address, employer, and contact address.

At the time of writing, all pages of the UK Research Office's website were redirecting to UKRI's statement about the cyber attack.

Although UKRI did not use the term ransomware, a cyber attack that results in data being encrypted is likely to be an attempt to extort a ransom from the organisation whose data has been scrambled.

Jake Moore, a cybersecurity specialist at Slovakian infosec biz ESET agreed, saying in a statement: "Theoretically, every time there is a ransomware attack, organisations should learn from other companies' mistakes. Whether this is preparing to fail - having protection in place for when a successful attack occurs - or by learning how others dealt with the aftermath, there are multiple case studies to heed advice from."

News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2021/02/01/ukri_ransomware_ukro_brussels/