Police: Xi'an university suffers cyber attacks from overseas

Northwestern Polytechnical University has suffered a series of cyber attacks launched from overseas, police in Xi'an City, capital of north China's Shaanxi Province where the university is located, said on Thursday.

A local police station received a report from the university on April 12 about the attacks.

The email system of the university allegedly received a number of trojan-contained phishing mails with subjects of research project assessment, invitation to defense of papers and notification about overseas exchange programs.

After clicking on the suspicious web links in the emails, some teachers and students conceded logging access to their university email to unknown people, thereby exposing their email data to theft, according to police.

Meanwhile, traces of cyber attacks had also been found on some personal computers of the faculty.

The university considered the cyber attacks a huge security threat, both to its internal information system and to the key data of its staff and students.

A preliminary technical analysis of the trojans and phishing mails collected in the case found that the attacks were launched by overseas hackers and outlaws, police said in a public statement on Thursday.