May 27, 2020 - by CSCS

After the forced shutdown due to a cyber-attack, CSCS engineers have restored a secure environment. Users have now again access to the computing infrastructure to continue their research work.

“Many scientists depend on our compute and data infrastructure for their daily work. And so I am glad to see that we have been able to recover from this attack, and that we have managed to do so in a fairly short amount of time”, says Maria Grazia Giuffreda, associated director and head of user engagement and support. “This would not have been possible without the dedication of our engineers who have done a terrific job and in the past few days devoted all their time to analyzing and solving the problem in all detail and implementing proper security measures. Without this it would not have been possible to recover so quickly and reopen the access to systems and services. I wish to thank all the staff for their efforts.”

The computer infrastructure of CSCS had to be shut down at short notice on 14 May following a cyber-attack. It quickly became clear that CSCS was not an isolated incident, but that it was a major illegal operation affecting data centres worldwide. Investigations into the cause are still ongoing.

(Picture above: Alessandro Della Bella - CSCS)