Hackers attack cloud computing providers and steal data from current or former students at at least 10 universities in the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada.
According to a report by the BBC, Human Rights Watch and the children's mental health organization Young Minds have also confirmed that they were affected.
The hack targeted Blackbowd, the world's largest provider of educational administration, fundraising and financial management software.
The US-based company's system was hacked in May.
The company has so far been criticized for failing to disclose it to the public and for paying unknown ransom to hackers.
According to the report, in some cases the data was limited to alumni who were asked to provide financial support to the institutions they graduated from, but in others hackers targeted data from staff, current students and other helpers. ۔
The names of the affected universities that have been confirmed by the BBC so far are:
New York University
Oxford Brooks University
University of Lauburo
University of Leeds
University of London
University of Reading
University College, Oxford
Ambrose University, Alberta, Canada
Human Rights Watch
Young Minds
Rhode Island School of Design, USA
University of Exeter
In addition, all agencies are sending apologies to those whose data has been stolen.
In some cases, the stolen data included phone numbers, donation dates and events, but credit card and other payment details have not been revealed to date.
Blackbowd, headquartered in South Carolina, declined to provide a complete list of victims, saying "they want to respect the privacy of their customers."
Also read: 7 Tips for Victims of Hacking and Blackmail
The company claims that "the majority of our customers were not part of the incident.
"In May 2020, we learned of an attack for ransom, which was stopped and the attacker removed our data before the attacker was stopped," he said in a statement on the company's website. ۔
The statement said Blackbow had complied with the ransom demand, which was not illegal, but contradicted the recommendations of several law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, NCA and Europol.
"They have confirmed that the (data) they deleted has been deleted," he added.
BlackBoad users who were not affected by the attack are:
University College London
Queen's University Bell Fast
University of the West of Scotland
Islamic Relief
Preventive breast cancer
Rice Morgan, a cybersecurity expert at Oxford Brooks University and a former student, said: "My main concern is how BlackBoard will convince universities what data hackers have obtained."
"My university has been told that there is no reason to believe that the stolen data will be misused or that it has been done," he said.
"I can't be bothered with that. How can they know what the attackers will do with this information?"
