Osaka Metropolitan University has canceled classes for several days after a suspected ransomware attack that began late last week shut down about 500 of its servers, The Record reported Tuesday. Personal information on at least 130,000 current and former students, faculty members and others may have been exposed, the university said.

What Happened

The outage reached nearly every part of the university's operations. Affected services include the internal network and email, academic administration and educational support systems, learning platforms, financial accounting, payroll and human resources, library services and the university's websites.

Classes were canceled through at least Thursday. In-person teaching is scheduled to resume Friday, while online classes will return as systems are restored, according to The Record.

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The data that may have been exposed includes names, addresses and email addresses. Because the university was formed in 2022 by merging Osaka Prefecture University and Osaka City University, the affected records may also include people connected to those predecessor schools. The university has not confirmed that any data was stolen, has not named the attackers and has not said whether a ransom was demanded.

Some systems were spared. Entrance exam applications and enrollment, which run on external servers, kept working, as did the electronic medical records at the university hospital and the veterinary clinical center. The university reported the incident to Japan's data protection authority and to government agencies, and outside cybersecurity specialists are investigating.

Why It Matters

The scale of the outage shows how much of a modern university runs on shared infrastructure. Losing roughly 500 servers at once took down teaching, staff pay and the library together, forcing a near-total halt to classes rather than a narrower disruption.

The potential exposure also extends well beyond current students. A merged institution inherits the records of its predecessors, so people who studied or worked at either earlier university years ago could be affected even though they have no current tie to the school.

The decision to keep exam and enrollment systems on external servers appears to have limited the damage to admissions, and the hospital's clinical records stayed online.

A Run of Japanese Incidents

The attack is the latest in a string of cyber incidents at large Japanese organizations. The Record listed recent cases at the newspaper publisher Nikkei, which it said involved about 9,000 malicious emails, as well as Daiwa Securities, Yamato Transport, Sagawa Express, Dai-ichi Life and the electronics maker Ikegami Tsushinki.

Universities make attractive targets because they run large, decentralized networks and hold personal data on tens of thousands of students and employees.

What to Watch

Key questions are whether systems come back in time for Friday's planned return to in-person classes, whether the university confirms that data was taken, and whether a ransomware group claims the attack or posts stolen files on a leak site. The findings of the outside investigators and any notice to affected individuals will determine how many of the 130,000 people need to take protective steps.