Pakistani scholar cyberattack targets UK

A UK academic blog faced tens of thousands of hits from servers in Pakistan one hour after publishing a post about exiled Pakistani scholar Roshaan Khattak on September 10. The incident is part of a broader, intensifying pattern of cyberattacks targeting academic discussion of human rights research, raising alarms about foreign interference in university free speech.

Roshaan Khattak, who was based at Wolfson College, Cambridge until December, was researching enforced disappearances and state killings in Balochistan province. He received death threats while at Cambridge. The blog, known as the 21 Group and which discusses bullying in academic life, was targeted after publishing about him. The attacks have never stopped and seem to be escalating. The latest attack targets an independent blog on UK academic affairs, with Pakistan monitoring it and seeking to take the story offline.

Pattern and escalation of cyber interference

Attacks on the 21 Group website have occurred two or three times a day, every day according to its organizers. A representative described the attack signature as consistent with automated monitoring of the internet for mentions of an individual followed by determined efforts to take the story down. Repeated attempts have been made to access personal information such as email addresses, though these were unsuccessful.

Subsequent attacks have been more distributed, using cloud servers in the Netherlands. In April, the Index on Censorship's online magazine was briefly knocked out by a cyberattack following a story on Khattak. A second attack on Index on Censorship in early July was unsuccessful. The 21 Group came under attack in August shortly after an employment tribunal found its founder, Wyn Evans, had been subject to retaliation by Cambridge for raising concerns over bullying of female staff. That August attack involved more than 1.3 million site requests over seven days from server blocks in Singapore, which the 21 Group believes was mounted by a UK-based academic.

The blog has also noted concerns that Khattak was unable to continue to a PhD despite supervisor support. That Khattak’s application was reviewed by an independent admissions committee alongside hundreds of others but was not selected. In a separate case in November, Sheffield Hallam University apologized to Laura Murphy, professor of human rights and modern slavery, after acknowledging it suppressed her research on Uyghur forced labor due to pressure from Chinese authorities.

Institutional warnings and expert assessment

The Office for Students' free speech champion Arif Ahmed has warned that foreign governments are seeking to chill free speech in UK universities. Reports indicate secret recordings of seminars involving Chinese students had been passed to Beijing security services.

Wyn Evans, professor of astrophysics at Cambridge and founder of the 21 Group, stated it is clear that state actors are behind these cyberattacks. He said the latest attack is more worrying than the August attack, arguing that an independent blog on UK academic affairs is being monitored by Pakistan which wanted to see the story offline. Evans said this should seriously concern anyone who cares about academic freedom in the UK. The attacks have never stopped and seem to be escalating.