Our open letter has been published on our websites and sent out on various listservs we'd be very grateful if you could forward this letter (see below) to your university principals. We believe it is important that they are aware of this matter.

 

Open Letter to all University Presidents, Principals, Rectors,
Chancellors and Vice Chancellors

 

December 20^th 2019

 

Justice Department investigates Sci-Hub founder on suspicion of working for Russian intelligence

A story in today’s Washington Post reports that the Justice Department has launched an investigation – with both criminal and intelligence-gathering elements – into Sci-Hub’s founder, Alexandra Elbakyan. The article says that a former senior U.S. intelligence official said he believes Elbakyan is working with Russia’s military intelligence arm.

This confirms our worst fears. At PSI we’ve been investigating Sci-Hub for three years. It was inconceivable that Elbakyan, all on her own, could have funded and run a site the size of Sci-Hub, containing 76 million articles and providing 200 million annual downloads. We have been warning of the risks presented by Sci-Hub for some time, for example here.

From our research with academic institutions and publishers over the past three years, we discovered the scale and scope of the phishing at western universities to obtain the credentials has been truly industrial. We found that Sci-Hub had stolen log-in credentials for 373 universities in 39 countries, including more than 150 academic institutions in America alone. Leading research nations with a high number of compromised university systems include the UK, Canada, Australia and Sweden as well as technical universities in Germany.

The vulnerability of universities to cyber-crime has been apparent for some time and the authorities have been warning about the risks to such institutions in the US and the UK.

Following the Washington Post’s revelations about Alexandra Elbakyan, the question now is what actions should universities take to protect their sensitive research, their faculty and their students?

As a matter of urgency, here are some simple and immediate steps that can be taken to enhance your current security:

• Block access to Sci-Hub. Make your users aware that by attempting to download content from these illegal and dangerous sites, they are putting their university at risk.
• You can block access to these illegal sites by downloading the Outgoing Block List from theIPregistry.org.
• Download the Incoming Block List from theIPregistry.org (your academic library staff should already have access to this resource) and protect your university from harmful intrusions.
• Finally, universities must share information with each other about the source of attacks, so that they and other organisations can start to protect themselves and each other.

Please get in touch if you’d like to hear more about any of the issues raised in this letter.

Kind regards,

Andrew Pitts

CEO and co-founder, PSI Ltd

andrew@PSIregistry.org