In response to multiple cyber-security agencies urging organisations to undergo maintenance, multiple UCL services and Moodle were made unavailable.
This was taken as a precautionary measure after researchers using AI discovered critical flaws within PHP, the programming language most commonly used to develop websites; roughly 70% of the internet has been impacted.
The maintenance meant students were unable to access key teaching resources, leaving many scrambling to ask course mates to share materials in order to complete work.
Widespread sentiment amongst many students has been frustration; a student telling The Cheese Grater that they were worried about how being unable to access Moodle “would affect wider learning and plans for the week.”
Others have expressed concern about their graded assessments, with one student reporting that they were unable to submit time critical assignments due to Moodle being unavailable and had to email their seminar leader about the issue.
Student Communications sent another email at 9PM stating that “access has now been restored to the majority of UCL pages” however that “Moodle remains temporarily unavailable”.
Further comms were sent on Thursday morning, to announce that access to their website and Moodle had been restored. However, the issuing of ID cards at both the Bloomsbury Campus and UCL East was paused throughout the day.
UCL then sent a final email on Thursday evening at 7pm confirming all key central services had been restored and ID card issuing would be instated from Friday morning.
A UCL spokesperson said:
“Some of our websites and online services were made temporarily unavailable on Wednesday in response to a software issue affecting organisations worldwide.
“Students were advised that key teaching information such as personal timetables could be accessed via UCL Go.
“Access to both our websites and Moodle were quickly restored and teaching and learning continued as scheduled yesterday.”