Thirty-eight thousand students at a university in Germany have been instructed to line up for a brand new email password after hackers targeted its servers.
Justus Liebig University (JLU) in Giessen, close to Frankfurt, was hit by a malware attack earlier this month, aiding its IT workers to shut down all of its computer systems, ZDNet reported. The incident is at present being investigated by Germany’s Research Centre for Cyber Security, although details about the precise nature of the malware attack are yet to be revealed.
Fearing that the malware could have reached its email server, the IT team decided to reset the passwords for the entire email accounts handled by the university.
However, the one way the students can receive their new password is by lining up on the university gym to collect it from staff. The passwords are reportedly being handed out on pieces of paper.
It seems that the considerably low-tech method for resetting passwords is down to a German law that prevents educational establishments from giving out such information electronically.
To make sure that the supply of the brand new passwords is carried out in an orderly method, the university has created a set schedule stipulating a date and time based on a person’s month of beginning. It’s assumed to take five days to complete the process of handing out the passwords to the thousands of people affected.