24 March 2026

Some of our students have received a message in which they are supposedly asked by the university to transfer a sum of money to a foreign bank account. The message claimes that if you do not do this, your university account will be blocked.

This is NOT a genuine message from the university, but very likely a case of phishing. Do not respond to this message under any circumstances, do not send an email to the address mentioned, and certainly do not transfer any money.

The university is currently investigating how this could have happened. It is possible that a handful of accounts have been hacked and that the message was sent from one or more of these accounts. As soon as we have more information, we will inform you of these developments.

Have you already responded to the sender’s request? Please contact the ISCC helpdesk of Leiden University: 071 527 8888

For more information, please see the Don't be fooled by phishing page.

[Update 24 March]

Over the past few days, the ISSC’s Security Operations Centre (SOC) and Security Affairs have been in touch with students and staff who fell victim to a phishing attack, as well as with a few students who very likely transferred money to the account number listed in the fraudulent email. We have spoken with them about what steps they can take. The university has also initiated a data‑breach procedure and filed a police report.

Thanks to the students and staff who promptly reported the phishing attack to the ISSC, the SOC was able to respond quickly. Unfortunately, this large‑scale phishing campaign could not be prevented, but immediate measures were taken to minimise its impact. For example, the SOC has ensured that the malicious senders have been blocked and the phishing e-mails have been cleaned up. We would like to thank everyone who reported the phishing attempt for their vigilance.

If you have received an email that seems suspicious, please don’t delete it – notify the ISSC at helpdesk@issc.leidenuniv.nl