by Christian Coulthard

QUT experienced a massive cybersecurity incident on Thursday 22 December 2022. The university shut down all IT systems to prevent the attack’s spread, and the university is working with external experts to respond to the security incident.

Conveniently for some, most summer semester assessment has been deferred until further notice. To the surprise of absolutely no one, a Law/IT student who was enrolled in Ethics and Civil Procedure has been found to be the prime suspect for the hack.

While being held in police custody, the anonymous student released this exclusive statement to the GSJ.

‘Yeah nah sorry guys, I just couldn’t cope with those mid-January assessment dates. I mean, you enrol in these things at the end of November thinking you’ve got f*cking ages to study, and then a coupla beach trips, Chrissy and NYE rolls past and you’re up shit creek without a paddle. Obviously it was too late to unenrol, so I thought it’d be a bit easier to nab a couple of extra weeks by instigating a massive ransomware attack on the university’s IT systems. Thought I might even make a buck or two to pay off my HECS debt if they decided to pay it!”

It’s not surprising that the student thought he could siphon a few dollarydoos from a university which currently holds $72 million in unallocated funds and yet still manages to underpay its staff. However, the hard working IT and HiQ staff at QUT seem to have done an outstanding job at getting things up and running again, with blackboard and others sites starting to come back online this week.

While many lament the fact that their personal data is probably still out there in the aether being bought and sold by various darkweb bidders, this author takes small comfort in the fact that big tech corporations have already been harvesting and sucking up every ounce of my personal information since the early 2000s, from the names of my neopets to my incriminating browser history. God help us all.

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