As UT San Antonio works to recover from a cybersecurity breach that forced key systems offline, students say they are still locked out of assignments, emails and other campus services even as the university reports progress restoring operations. (SBG San Antonio)
The university is still restoring systems and says services are being restored every day. UTSA took systems offline after confirming the breach, and investigators are working to better understand the threat.
The disruption also affected the start of the fall semester. Fall classes were supposed to start yesterday, but they were pushed to Monday as the university works to get back online.
Students on campus said the breach has been confusing and frustrating, particularly given UTSA’s reputation in cybersecurity.
“It was really confusing because obviously UTSA is known for cybersecurity and it’s a major thing because you expect a school that has a good cybersecurity field to deal with this,” one student said.
Adding, “We hope this resolves as fast as it can. Hopefully there’s no more pushback.”
Michael Liebowitz, a former legal chief advisor for Army Cyber Command, said attackers can leave behind hidden access to a network.
“You never know what was installed, what was hiding in there. These bad actors are really adept at hiding things,” Liebowitz said.
UTSA has said the attack did not reach its core systems, but questions remain about what may have been accessed.
“Is their data safe? How deep was this? Did it get into personal data? Social Security numbers? banking information? financial information?,” Liebowitz said.
Liebowitz also said the use of AI has made it easier for cyber scammers to attack networks.
“They can find and exploit vulnerabilities at kind of a massive scale,” he said.
UTSA said it expects to have everything back up and running on Monday, Aug. 24.
