Qatar University has denied the hacking of its website, stressing that the infrastructure of the website protection systems is strong, consistent, and is constantly updated.
Qatar University said in a press statement on Thursday that all its website's information is under full protection, pointing out that it was only an attempt to control some of the students email accounts, what is technically known as "phishing".
Concerning the "phishing" technique, Qatar University explained that an anonymous email is sent to receiver, asking the account holder to enter its data, which includes passwords, and to use those accounts later to send similar emails to a larger number of accounts.
The university stressed that after follow-up and inventory, it was found that the number of those affected by this attempt was limited, and their accounts were fully restored, without losing any information.
It pointed out that the Information Technology Services Department took appropriate security measures immediately after reporting the "phishing" of email accounts, to protect the affected accounts, and also to inform the university community not to respond to such emails, and ignore and report those emails.
Qatar University said that "phishing" attempts targeting email accounts are ongoing, both at Qatar University and even in other international email accounts, warning that the only way to avoid the occurrence of such electronic problems is to ignore the opening of anonymous emails, or to click on an unknown link, and report it immediately to those responsible for the security and protection of networks.
The statement stressed that Qatar University is continuously asking its employees through emails not to respond to such messages, and to take precautions when dealing with such emails.
The statement quoted Dr Salem al-Naemi, Director of Information Technology Services at Qatar University, as saying that what happened was not hacking as reported by some newspapers, which published inaccurate information, but was "phishing" in which the user himself presents his or her account data and this phenomenon is repeated not only at the university level but in all the systems in the world.
Dr al-Naemi reassured everyone that the matter is under control, and called on all university employees to be careful and immediately report any suspicious matters.
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