Foreign interference fears over cyberattacks on academic blogs

A wave of cyberattacks on British academic blogs has raised concerns over alleged efforts by authoritarian regimes to shut down research into human rights abuses.

Just one hour after a post about Roshaan Khattak, an exiled Pakistani scholar who was based at Wolfson College, Cambridge until December, was published by the 21 Group on 10 September, the blog known for discussing bullying in academic life was bombarded by tens of thousands of hits from internet servers in Pakistan.

Attacks on the website have since taken place “two or three times a day, every day”, its organisers told Times Higher Education.

“This attack has a very distinctive signature – it is consistent with automated monitoring of the internet for mentions of an individual followed by determined efforts to take the story down,” explained a 21 Group representative.

“The attacks have never stopped, and they seem to be escalating. There have been repeated attempts to access personal information such as email addresses or personal information, although they haven’t got through.

“It’s quite clear that the initial attack came from servers in Pakistan but the subsequent attacks have been more distributed using cloud servers in the Netherlands, for instance. They’re looking for any weakness in our defences.”

The unsuccessful attempt to remove the post about Khattak, who received death threats while at Cambridge, where he was researching enforced disappearances and state killings in Baluchistan province, follows similar attacks on the Index on Censorship this summer.

In April, the free speech organisation’s online magazine was briefly knocked out by a cyberattack following a story on Khattak. A second attack in early July was unsuccessful.

The attacks follow warnings by the Office for Students’ free speech champion Arif Ahmed that foreign governments are seeking to chill free speech in UK universities, amid reports that secret recordings of seminars involving Chinese students had been passed to Beijing security services.

In November, Sheffield Hallam University apologised to Laura Murphy, professor of human rights and modern slavery, after the institution acknowledged it had suppressed her research on Uyghur forced labour after pressure from Chinese authorities.

In its blog, the 21 Group outlined concerns raised by academics and civil liberty groups that Khattak was unable to continue on to a PhD despite the support of his proposed supervisor. According to the 21 Group, Cambridge has yet to respond to these concerns.

“It’s clear that state actors are behind these cyberattacks,” said Wyn Evans, professor of astrophysics at Cambridge and founder of the 21 Group, which also came under attack in August shortly after an employment tribunal found Evans had been subject to retaliation by Cambridge for raising concerns over the bullying of female staff.

That attack, which involved more than 1.3 million site requests over seven days from server blocks in Singapore, is believed to have been mounted by an UK-based academic, the group believes.

For Evans, the latest attack is more worrying than last month’s. “This is an independent blog on UK academic affairs but Pakistan is obviously monitoring it and wanted to see this story offline...this should seriously concern anyone who cares about academic freedom in the UK.”

jack.grove@timeshighereducation.com