We’re not suggesting one of the kids did it – but… one of the kids did it. Columbia University has recently experienced significant disruptions to its IT systems, which began in the early morning hours of Tuesday, June 25, 2025, and continued into Wednesday. The incident is suspected to be a cyberattack, with widespread outages affecting key university services, including the UNI login authentication system, LionMail email service, and the CourseWorks online assignment platform. These outages also impacted academic and administrative systems, as well as communication tools across the university’s Morningside campus.
University officials have been working to restore services as quickly as possible. They are coordinating with law enforcement agencies, including the New York City Police Department (NYPD), to investigate the incident. Although an unnamed group claimed responsibility for the attack, Columbia has stated that this claim is unfounded and continues to investigate the true cause. Notably, clinical operations at the Columbia University Irving Medical Center (CUIMC) were not affected by the outage.
A Trump-approved cyberattack
During the disruption, some students and faculty reported seeing unusual images on campus screens, including an image of a smiling President Trump appearing on public monitors in the Alfred J. Lerner Hall student center. The university has not confirmed whether these images are directly related to the cyber incident.
Current status
As of the latest reports, many services have been restored, but some, such as the main course catalog and library catalogs, remain unavailable. The university has reassured the community that there are currently no signs of a data breach. Michael Thaddeus, a Columbia mathematician who was attempting to do some research on Wednesday, called the attack inconvenient and suspicious.
