Over 2L cyberattacks, 4L data breaches hit edu institutions over nine months: Study

As the Maulana Azad Medical College, Delhi Secretariat and the University College of Medical Sciences (GTB Hospital) were targeted by a hoax bomb threat on Tuesday, a study by CyberPeace reveals that over the last nine months, educational institutions across the country have suffered over two lakh cyberattacks and nearly four lakh data breaches.

The study, “Exploring Cyber Threats and Digital Risks to Indian Educational Institutions,” was conducted between July 2023 and April 2024. It finds that the attacks involved both domestic and international actors.

Over 8,000 unique usernames and about 54,000 unique passwords were detected. Commonly targeted usernames include “root” and “admin,” and weak passwords such as “123456” and “password” were frequently attempted by the attackers.

To counter this threat, CyberPeace launched the Cyber First Responder (CFR) Initiative in partnership with DELNET and with support from Google.org. It aims to train students, librarians and academic staff to act as first responders against cyber incidents.