(Updated 261023, 13:35) Most of the University's web services were restored on Thursday following a security update. Shortly after midday on Friday, KauPlay was also brought back online, although verification work is still ongoing.
– There is a certain degree of complexity involved, as we need to ensure that the update has been fully implemented across the services before we can reconnect them, says Mats Möller, IT Director at Karlstad University, on Thursday morning.
He explains that, alongside the university’s own efforts, Sunet is also working to restore functionality in its services, including Sunet Play, to which KauPlay is connected. This has affected students in particular.
– Students had access yesterday to My Kau and the Canvas learning platform via links on our temporary homepage. However, because Sunet was also affected by the security vulnerability, students did not have access to recorded lectures and other material on KauPlay, says Mats Möller.
– Sunet is working to restore its services, and we at Karlstad University are doing the same. However, a large number of services need to be updated, so they will be brought back online gradually throughout the day.
This was also the case on Thursday. However, Sunet and the external provider they work with for the Play service encountered unforeseen issues during the security update, which delayed the process. Shortly after midday on Friday, KauPlay was successfully restored. At that point, some verification procedures were still outstanding, which means users may experience occasional disruptions before the service is fully operational again.
On Wednesday, Karlstad University and several other higher education institutions shut down a number of their web services as a security precaution. This included the homepage of kau.se, which was replaced with a temporary page containing links to essential tools for students.
The security vulnerability, found in the programming language PHP, led public-sector organisations around the world to take their websites offline. A security patch became available late on Wednesday afternoon and is now being installed progressively, allowing websites and services to be reopened in stages.
