Students at Montana State University respond to a cyberattack

Bozeman, Montana – On April 20, Montana State University reported experiencing a cyberattack. Students discussed the security breach and who they believed might have been responsible.

Aaron Foster, a student at MSU, claims to have learned of the cyberattack on Thursday morning.

“I got up one morning to do homework and when I couldn’t log on to the website, I was like, Oh, that’s strange, and then an hour later I got an email saying that they got cyberattacked,” said Foster.

Foster claims he was surprised by the attack given that MSU had just won a $4 million prize for enhancing cybersecurity.

“A year or two ago, MSU realized they needed to add some second-hand ID or an outside source because it was really easy to just get on a website. So they had that because there’s that problem, but apparently, that wasn’t enough,” said Foster.

Officials from Montana State made it clear that the $4.47 million grant from the Department of Homeland Security in 2022 was just for research and had nothing to do with managing the campus network on a day-to-day basis.

Jackson Wall, Foster’s friend, claims that these examinations have been impacted by the cyberattack.

“Had two exams canceled today,” said Wall. “One of them, students couldn’t study for the exam because they can access d2l and then the second one, the teacher just canceled it because he couldn’t access the exam.”

Foster and Wall each had different theories on who might be responsible for this incident.

“It’s probably like a computer science kid or something that’s upset about something. I don’t know exactly, but that’s just my guess,” said Wall.

“Well, it could be something like TikTok getting back at Montana for banning them,” said Foster.

Due to the cyberattack, these two students have less homework and more time to study for their exams.

“Oh darn. Less homework for me to do. Oh, man, I can’t do it now,” said Foster.

“I’m not opposed like, I was a little nervous about a couple of them (exams). So nice to kind of get those off the plate,” said Wall.