Chinese hackers targeted at least 27 universities mainly in the U.S. in an effort to access maritime technology being developed for the military, according to a report today in the Wall Street Journal.

Most the institutions were in the U.S., but the report stated that attacks were also found at universities in Canada and South East Asia. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Washington were hit, according to cybersecurity intelligence firm iDefense, but anonymous sources told the Journal that Penn State and Duke University were also targeted.

The attacks, going back to April 2017, were aimed at universities with connections to underwater research. Some of that research is developed with the U.S. Navy’s warfare center. Security experts gave the hackers such names as Temp.Periscope, Leviathan and Mudcarp.

Universities are often seen as having weak defenses and so can be easy prey for cyberattackers who have realized they are working with the military on research matters. The Navy didn’t say exactly what research was targeted but told the Journal it was working on the problem. FireEye, a U.S.-based cybersecurity firm, has also confirmed the hacks.

“The fact that Chinese hackers are targeting academic professionals and university students in order to obtain sensitive military secrets is alarming,” Douglas Crawford, cybersecurity expert at BestVPN.com, told SiliconANGLE. “To a large extent, the solution to such attacks lies in the hands of network engineers and cybersecurity professionals, but there are things which individuals who might be targeted by these hackers can do protect both their work and their university computer systems.”

That might be as simple as running antivirus checks or being more thorough with verifying emails. The hackers reportedly used various email phishing methods.

“Students and researchers should also consider encrypting their emails using PGP and their files using a strong symmetric cipher such as AES to prevent sensitive data from falling into the wrong hands,” Crawford added.

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