SOTA parent portal taken down in response to systems vulnerability targeted by global cyberattacks
In a message to parents on Wednesday (Jul 23) morning, SOTA said the cyberattacks started around Jul 18 and are specifically targeted at school-managed systems.
"To safeguard our systems and data against this critical threat, we are initiating an immediate and mandatory patching process for all school-managed servers that support our parent portal," said SOTA in its message.
The school said it had identified the vulnerability in the third-party server infrastructure supporting the portal and that the third-party service provider has acknowledged such reports from their server customers.
It added that it is working to complete the patching and restore full service safely as soon as possible, and will inform parents when the portal is back up.
A CNA check on the SOTA website on Wednesday afternoon showed that the school's student and staff portals appear to have been taken offline as well.
The global cyberattack campaign has already compromised organisations globally, including government agencies and multinational corporations, said SOTA.
The school did not name the third-party service provider.
However, this comes after the Cyber Security Agency of Singapore (CSA) issued an alert on Tuesday for users of Microsoft SharePoint to update to the latest version, citing "critical vulnerabilities".
On the same day, Microsoft issued a threat intelligence note warning of active attacks targeting SharePoint servers via known vulnerabilities. It said security updates have been released to address the flaws.
The note linked the attacks to three China-based groups, and added that investigations into other threat actors are ongoing.
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