Reports indicate that Columbia University experienced a suspected cyberattack on Tuesday morning, which took down its systems for several hours, prompting officials to alert authorities.
“This morning, the IT system at Columbia University encountered a disruption that affected services on the Morningside campus,” the university stated in a notification.
“Our IT team is currently working to restore services as quickly as possible, and law enforcement has been notified. Clinical surgeries at CUIMC have not been impacted at this time,” the statement continued.
According to sources, the attack was executed early Tuesday, resulting in minor access control breaches within the university’s systems.
At least one dorm around campus reported that televisions displayed unusual images, including those of President Trump, though it’s uncertain if this is linked to the broader outage.
The university’s newspaper noted online claims from groups that allegedly took responsibility, suggesting that the Ivy League institution had been compromised over the weekend.
Numerous student services—including the email system and the online portal for coursework managed by professors—were encrypted by the outage.
The first alert to the Columbia community was sent out around 7:30 AM, warning of a “system-wide outage.”
About three hours later, students and faculty were advised to stay logged into their accounts to access necessary online services, the report indicated.
The NYPD mentioned they were not aware of any specific hacks or outages impacting the Manhattan campus.
It’s still unclear which law enforcement agencies are involved in the investigation.
This situation comes as warnings are circulating nationwide regarding a potential increase in cyberattacks from Iran, following Trump’s recent military actions targeting nuclear facilities in the region.
