Sorry for giving into cable-TV-style news headlines, but it seems that some inspired hackers have realized how much information is (easily?) available on higher education servers.
After Boston College and California State University, another security breach was discovered at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management on March 20, 2005 as reported in NU business school computer system hacked, an article written by Dave Newbart from The Chicago Sun-Times.
School spokesman Charles Loebbaka refused to say what information was kept on the hacked servers, but he said there was no evidence personal information was accessed in the attack.
The school said after it discovered the breach, it immediately took the system off-line and rebuilt it. Officials said the attack appeared similar to ones recently at Boston College and California State University. At Boston College, hackers reportedly planted a program that could launch attacks against other computers.
According to the press release posted on the School’s website, “Kellogg Information Systems determined that Kellogg user IDs and passwords, which provide access to various information sources on the Northwestern system, were potentially obtained by the hackers. While the University has no evidence that personal identification was accessed, Northwestern has taken the precautionary measure of disabling all passwords and user IDs for Kellogg School faculty and staff (approximately 500) and students (approximately 3,000) affected. Kellogg Information Systems is also working with alumni to create new passwords for approximately 18,000 of the school’s alumni whose passwords were also potentially obtained”.
When you weigh in that most people tend to use the same username and password for all the websites they use, such security breaches can really lead to a lot of problems for the constituents of the targeted institutions.
MORE: A thief has stolen a laptop computer containing personal information about nearly 100,000 alumni, graduate students and past applicants at the University of California, Berkeley. See Berkeley’s press release for details.