The hack on 23 December 2019 completely paralysed the university. UM was faced with a “devilish dilemma”, in the words of Nick Bos, then member of the Executive Board. Eventually, after a few days, UM decided to give in to the hackers’ demands and pay the ransom (in bitcoin). In 2022, Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant revealed that the police and the Public Prosecutor were very quickly able to track part of the money. In February 2020, they managed to freeze a so-called ‘wallet’ containing crypto currency worth €40,000. In the two years it took to transfer the money to the Netherlands, the value had risen to half a million euros.
UM then had to wait almost a further two years before they were finally able to receive the money. “The Public Prosecution Service first had to carry out a thorough legal investigation to make sure that the whole amount belonged to UM, and that none of the money belonged to any other victims of these criminals,” said UM spokesperson Koen Augustijn.
That investigation has since been completed: at the end of 2024, the total sum of €561,976 was paid into the university’s bank account. That is over €350,000 more than the university paid in 2019, although UM doesn’t consider it profit. “After all, the total damages were significantly higher than the money that has now been returned,” said Augustijn. In fact, the costs of the hack and the subsequent fallout – including stricter digital security – are “dozens of times higher, more than a million euros a year”, Jacques Beursgens, head of the ICT service centre, told Observant last January.
Nevertheless, the money won’t be used to compensate those costs. “We see this as an unexpected bonus,” said Augustijn. “So, we have decided, let’s use this money to help people who are struggling.” The Executive Board had previously announced a plan to deposit the money in a fund for students and scholars at risk. That is currently being set up, said Augustijn, who called it “an administrative action, but one that still needs to happen”.
The exact details of the fund are still to be decided, but it is clear that €120,000 will go to the Safe Haven Fellowship Programme of the NIAS research institute in Amsterdam (part of KNAW, the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences). Since 2023, this institute has offered safe workplaces in the Netherlands to scholars, artists, journalists and more who are stuck in war zones. For example, at the start of the year, six researchers from Ukraine and Gaza came to Amsterdam.
“Our contribution is equivalent to the cost of bringing a researcher to the Netherlands to do scientific work for a year, including cost of living and the like,” said Margriet Schreuders, head of the Student Service Centre, and as of recently, also the coordinator of the UM Refugee policy. That makes UM an official partner of the programme for this year, just like the University of Amsterdam. Although this doesn’t mean that the researchers will be working in Maastricht. “They spend four days a week at NIAS in Amsterdam. On the fifth day, they head out into the rest of the country, which could also include Maastricht. For example, two researchers will soon give a lecture at Studium Generale. And we are currently looking at whether there are any opportunities to work together with Maastricht students or researchers.”