When hackers broke into a Harvard University Web server last month, administrators first thought they were being taunted about their vulnerability. Now the university is reporting that the intruders may have done far worse, and accessed records of 10,000 people. Some of those records included Social Security numbers.
A Web server containing data on applicants to the university’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences “was hacked by an outsider and compromised in a way that the data on the server could have been viewed or copied,” administrators said in a statement yesterday. More than 6,000 applicant records listed a name, Social Security number, date of birth, address, e-mail address, phone numbers, test scores, previous school attended, and school records.
The university said that its initial investigation into the incident, in late February, did not reveal the extent of the intrusion or the personal nature of all the data exposed. Further inquiries showed the potential for greater damage.
Harvard has sent notices to all affected people and is offering, at the university’s expense, to help them obtain credit reports, set up credit-monitoring services and fraud alerts, and take other steps to guard against identity thieves.—Josh Fischman
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