Recently, Justus Liebig University in Giessen, near Frankfurt, was hit by a malware attack and 38,000 students were required to physically stand in line for new email passwords.
According to a report by ZDNet, after the servers were hacked, the school’s IT staff was forced to come up with a quick solution and decided to shut down all of its computer systems. The IT team also decided to reset the passwords for all of the email accounts, as a safety procedure.
The students had to line up and collect their new passwords from staff, on pieces of paper, due to the German law that won’t let educational systems reveal this type of information electronically.
However, the process is long and is expected to take approximately five days to handle out the passwords to thousands of students.
Moreover, the university’s IT staff is using 1,200 USB sticks with anti-virus scanners to scan each computer for the malware.
The authorities don’t possess information about the origin of the attack, but the case is being investigated by Germany’s Research Centre for Cyber Security.
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