CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – In February, as many as 10,000 graduate students and applicants from Harvard University had their personal information compromised after a hacker launched an attack on the university’s server. Some of the information was posted on the Internet.
During the week of March 10, officials for the university began contacting applicants and students regarding the breach, explaining that in some cases, Social Security numbers may have been accessed.
The attack occurred on Feb. 16 on a server containing information for current students in housing and applications for prospective students, according to Harvard chief information officer Dan Moriarty. He said around 6,600 of the applications contained Social Security numbers.
The next day, the server was taken offline. In order to help officials investigate the attack, the server remained offline for five days. However, some of the information was posted on The Pirate Bay, a Web site that enables people to download music and movies.
Some student identification numbers and housing information could be accessed from the site for a short while; however, no Social Security numbers were posted.
Because the university is uncertain as to how much personal information was online, they notified everyone with information on the server. For those whose private information was compromised, the university offered free access to credit monitoring service and credit reports.
Officials have not said how the system was breached; however, some have speculated that administrators have basic passwords, making it easy for hackers to attack the system.
Moriarty said Harvard had been targeted by hackers before, but this time the attempt was successful.
Jonathon Giffin, an assistant professor for computer science at Georgia Tech, said hackers usually target universities for the computing power and rarely for personal information.
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