Southeastern target of cyberattack; State Police investigating

Southeastern Louisiana University was the target of a cyberattack that led to much of the campus being without internet throughout the weekend due to the university intentionally taking the network offline as a preventative measure, campus administrators confirmed Monday, 

The attack was reported to Louisiana State Police, which is investigating the attack, according to a statement from the university. The Governor’s Office of Homeland Security is providing assistance, a spokesman said.

As of Monday, the university was working to get its systems back online.  SLU issued a statement Saturday advising the campus of a service disruption affecting the school’s computer-based services, including email and Moodle, an online service that faculty and students use to exchange documents and submit coursework and tests.

University spokesperson Mike Revolt said that the university does not have a firm timeline for getting services back online, but said the school hopes to get things back in order over the next few days.

Gabe Willis, dean of Student Life, confirmed on Twitter that students are still expected to attend class. 

The outage also affected keycard access to dormitories, campus news source The Lion’s Roar reported. Revolt confirmed Monday afternoon that the card systems are now fully operational.

The attack impacted other campus activities, including sporting events. The Louisiana High School Athletic Association announced it would only be selling tickets to its Marsh Madness event for cash because of the outage. 

Internet outages were also reported Monday at LSU, according to The Reveille. University spokesperson Cody Worsham confirmed to the Illuminator that the situation at LSU is unrelated to the cyberattack at Southeastern, but did not comment as to what caused problems for the campus.

This is a developing story. Check back for more information.