Clinical trials registry ANZCTR taken offline after University of Sydney breach

The Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry, operated by the University of Sydney, was taken offline on 28 February 2025 after a cyber incident the university dated to 24 February. The Australian Cancer Trials website, also run by the university, was affected by the same intrusion.

A forensic investigation completed on 27 February identified the data involved. The university said the affected records held personal information belonging to trial administrators and contacts, including names, telephone and fax numbers, email addresses, institutional affiliations, addresses and passwords. It said no identifiable health data had been compromised and that there was no ongoing threat to university systems.

Affected users were advised to reset passwords, avoid reusing them, enable multi-factor authentication where available and stay alert to phishing attempts. The university notified the Australian Cyber Security Centre and the New South Wales Privacy Commissioner.

The outage disrupted research across both countries. ANZCTR is the region's largest public trials registry and feeds trial records to the World Health Organization's International Clinical Trials Registry Platform. With only a read-only version restored, researchers could not register new trials or update existing entries, which in turn held up participant recruitment. Information Age reported that the registry covered at least 26,466 trials and that the university was pointing researchers to alternative registries in the WHO network while it strengthened security on the affected system and worked to restore both sites.