The hacking group ShinyHunters has claimed responsibility for a major cyber-attack on the University of Nottingham, confirmed on June 10. Around 455,000 unique email addresses were compromised — the number of people affected is lower, since many had both a university and a personal address — and one expert put the haul at roughly 40 gigabytes taken from the university's student record system.
Stolen data includes passport numbers, national insurance numbers, dates of birth, financial details, ethnicity and disability information, affecting both current students and alumni. Early speculation pointed to voice phishing or a supply chain breach; reporting since has identified the entry point as an Oracle PeopleSoft zero-day, CVE-2026-35273, which Mandiant links to attacks on more than 100 organisations, most of them universities.
Security researcher Troy Hunt believes the university was held to ransom and refused to pay, which is why the data was published — the university itself won't comment while the criminal investigation runs. EMSOU's Regional Cyber Crime Unit is investigating, and the university has notified the ICO, NCSC, Office for Students and Action Fraud.
Affected individuals should enable multi-factor authentication and stay alert to unexpected phone calls.
Source: BBC News