The University of Notre Dame Australia was still recovering in March 2025 from a cyberattack that disabled large parts of its IT estate in late January, weeks before the start of first semester.
Students and recent graduates reported that they could not enrol online, reach class timetables, access coursework, connect to campus wi-fi or use printers. One student said a job offer fell through because the university could not produce an academic transcript, and staff were reported as unable to say when systems would return. The university ran manual workarounds and said it could issue testamurs and other official documents so graduates could still apply for work or further study.
The Fog ransomware group claimed the intrusion and said it had taken 62.2 gigabytes of data, including employee and student contact details, student medical documents and non-disclosure agreements. Notre Dame said all evidence indicated that its primary human resources, financial and student database systems remained secure, and that any impact would be limited to data held on a small number of separate servers.
The university reported the incident to the Australian Cyber Security Centre and said it was engaging with other government agencies and accrediting authorities. It faced criticism from students over the length of the outage and the limited information it provided during it.
Updates
The university said tax file numbers held on a small number of local file servers were affected. It notified the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, worked with the Australian Taxation Office on protective monitoring, and obtained a legal injunction making it an offence to access or share the data should it be published.
Sources
- University of Notre Dame Fremantle faces backlash following cyber attackCyber Daily
- Exclusive: Fog ransomware group claims January hack of the University of Notre Dame AustraliaCyber Daily
- Australia: Cyber attack at University of Notre Dame still disrupting services, resolution time unclearCyber Security Review (republishing ABC News)
- University of Notre Dame Australia investigating cyber incidentAustralian Cyber Security Magazine