MATLAB developer bringing systems back online following ransomware attack

The developer of the popular MATLAB programming language and numeric computing environment said a ransomware attack is impacting its IT systems. 

Massachusetts-based MathWorks provided an update to customers on Monday after initially reporting outages on May 18, confirming that it experienced a ransomware attack that took down online applications and internal systems used by staff. 

“We have notified federal law enforcement of this matter,” the company said. “We have brought many of these systems back online and are continuing to bring other systems back online with the assistance of cybersecurity experts.”

MathWorks has millions of users, many of which are engineers and scientists who use MATLAB for data analysis, computation and more. MATLAB and other MathWorks products are used by about 6,500 colleges and universities, according to the company. The company has 6,500 employees and more than 30 offices across Europe, Asia and North America. 

The incident impacted multiple MATLAB tools as well as parts of the MathWorks site, including the career page, the cloud center, the store and the file exchange. MATLAB Online and MATLAB Mobile were restored on Friday. 

In an update on Tuesday, MathWorks said it was still investigating the issue. Multiple pages on the MathWorks website are still down. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

An expansive data breach report from Verizon last month found that ransomware was used in nearly half of the 12,195 confirmed data breaches in 2024.