Germany's Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich is investigating a cyberattack in which an unidentified attacker accessed a system holding student enrolment data, including health insurance numbers, financial aid identifiers and bank details, and the university says it must assume the data was in fact retrieved. LMU, one of Germany's largest universities with more than 52,000 students, detected the incident on Wednesday and disclosed it on Saturday; it has not established when the access began or how long it lasted, and has not said how many people are affected or how much data was taken. The exposed records include names, dates of birth and other identifying information, contact details and LMU email addresses, bank account information, course of study and previous educational qualifications, plus numbers tied to Germany's student financial aid programme and, in some cases, information about the reasons students requested leaves of absence. Examination records, specific course content and individual academic performance were not affected. The university disconnected the affected server, brought in external cybersecurity specialists, engaged law enforcement and shut down further systems as a precaution, leaving some internal services temporarily unavailable. No attacker has been identified and the university has not said whether a ransom demand was received.

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