On Tuesday, Oct. 10, Seattle Pacific University’s Computer and Information System’s HelpDesk shut down SPU’s wiki for a brief period of time. The platform, on SPU’s website, was affected by multiple hacking attempts to use the system as leverage for exploitation.

CIS mentioned they have already taken action to slim down the chance of this risk, as the attackers were prevented from being granted access, but the attempts built up into a slight break on Tuesday morning.

Karen Park, technology support services director of CIS, explained the situation.

“We have always monitored and will continue to monitor and review our systems for security vulnerabilities,” Park said. “Sometimes we need to restrict access to systems until such time as we can upgrade them to be secure.”

After a couple days, the Wiki user access was up and running. Some students did not see a huge impact with the system offline. 

Maren Johnson, a freshman majoring in nursing, explained how SPU’s wiki system affected her.

“With the shut down, nothing changed for me personally, I generally don’t use SPU Wiki,” Johnson said.

Anabelle Chacon, a freshman majoring in education, is not a student who uses the system either.

“I mean, I don’t normally use SPU wiki, but I would love to learn how it works and see how it can be a good tool to have as a student,” Chacon said.

October is Cybersecurity Month and through emails sent to the SPU community, CIS is aiming to help students prepare and give awareness of scams. CIS explained phishing: a way for attackers to ask for personal information through emails.

Terms such as vishing and smishing are both vital to add to any student’s vocabulary – vishing is used when attackers call potential victims and try to steal your information, whereas smishing is when you get a text message meant to trick you into giving out your personal data.

Anything now can be a scam, even a job opportunity. Students can follow the HelpDesk guidelines to protect themselves from malicious attackers. Getting hacked can be easy, but putting your personal information back together? Harder than a 1000-piece puzzle.

Starting this month, the HelpDesk will be sending out a weekly blog post that values four crucial topics. The topics are: Phishing, Social Engineering, Passphrases for passwords and Ransomware. Keep an eye out this spooky season for a CIS quiz, because with a 100 percent score, students instantly get entered into a raffle.

“The HelpDesk is a great help and keeps me in the loop for all tech needs,” Chacon said.