Qatar University denies hacking of its website, says it was an attempt at ‘phishing’
Qatar University, one of the top educational institutions in the Arab world, has denied the news that its website was hacked recently.
While denying the claims, it stressed that the infrastructure of the website protection systems is strong, consistent, and is constantly updated, reported Gulf Times.
Qatar University said in a statement that all information in the website was completely safe. It pointed out that there was an attempt to control some of the students e-mail accounts, what is technically known as ‘phishing.’
Explaining phishing, Qatar University said that it was the process when an anonymous email is sent to a receiver, asking them to enter data such as passwords, and use those credentials later to send similar emails to a larger number of accounts.
The university stressed that after follow up and inventory, it was found that the number of those affected by this attempt was very limited, and their accounts were fully restored, without losing any information, reported Qatar Tribune.
The Technology Services Department took appropriate security measures to protect the affected accounts and also to inform the university community not to respond to such e-mails and ignore and report these e-mails.
The statement stressed that Qatar University is continuously asking its employees through e-mails not to respond to such messages, and to take maximum precautions when dealing with these e-mails.
Picture courtesy: Glassdoor
