Portal breach at Germany's top university exposes every registered user's password

Attackers stole central university login passwords belonging to everyone registered with the Technical University of Munich's myTUM portal, including an admin whose credentials were then used to attack a second system.

TUM restored access to its TUMonline campus management system on Monday morning, allowing users to change their passwords.

The university disclosed the attack on November 6. The initial attack targeted the myTUM portal, which serves students and faculty members, providing centralized online access to services and documents.

TUM said the attackers used the admin's credentials to launch a follow-on attack on TUMonline, its central campus management system, which forced the IT team to take it offline.

The university has not disclosed how the attackers initially gained access or how the stolen passwords were stored. It did not immediately answer questions about the number of affected users.

It also did not specify whether this sysadmin had multi-factor authentication (MFA) switched on, but it confirmed that "user accounts with MFA were …