The University of Nottingham announced on Wednesday that intruders had accessed its student records platform in an incident impacting both current enrollees and graduates.

Nottingham University operates as a public research institution employing 7000 staff members and serving more than 46000 students while holding rankings among the top 20 in the United Kingdom and top 100 globally.

The university informed BleepingComputer via email that the event exposed a substantial volume of information and that authorities have been notified including the UK Information Commissioners Office.

The University of Nottingham has suffered a cyber incident resulting in access to a substantial volume of data within our student record system by a recognized cybercriminal organization the university stated. We are collaborating with the external provider responsible for the platform to conduct a detailed forensic review.

We prioritize the protection of information in our possession and have notified Action Fraud along with the Information Commissioners Office the statement continued.

Although the university has not yet identified the perpetrators the ShinyHunters extortion group asserted responsibility on Tuesday and distributed an archive of purportedly stolen files as evidence.

On their hidden web disclosure platform the cybercrime organization asserts acquisition of more than 40GB of files that include student financial records billing details payment data credit card information and campus portal exports from the University of Nottingham along with its Malaysia and China locations.

ShinyHunters further noted that the acquired files encompass full names residential addresses IP addresses telephone numbers and birth dates of the affected individuals.

Following review of the exposed information the breach notification service Have I Been Pwned reported on Wednesday that the incident impacts 454600 past and present students including their email addresses together with comprehensive personal details such as names addresses telephone numbers ethnic backgrounds disabilities passport numbers and data on academic registrations and tuition payments.

ShinyHunters PeopleSoft Information Theft Operations

As BleepingComputer has discovered this incident forms part of an extensive information acquisition effort by the ShinyHunters group that has extracted data from more than 100 entities globally following intrusions into their cloud and local Oracle PeopleSoft systems.

PeopleSoft serves as a business software package designed to handle extensive functions including human resources finance payroll supply chain procurement and campus management.

ShinyHunters informed BleepingComputer that they employ a gadget chain combining undisclosed flaws and older vulnerabilities in these operations noting that success varies across systems likely due to configuration differences.

BleepingComputer contacted Oracle to verify awareness of an actively used PeopleSoft zero-day vulnerability but has not received a response.

Nottingham University marks the second UK institution to report a data incident recently following the University of Oxford disclosure last week regarding compromise of its CareerConnect career services platform on May 28.

Oxford University also reported an earlier data incident in early May after ShinyHunters breached Instructure Canvas learning management system.