Harvard Hacker steals personal information of 10,000 University students and applicants.
The University admits that personal information of some 10,000 students and applications may have been breached by someone who broke into their network.
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Mar 16, 2008 14:07 PM GMT
Personal information of nearly 10,000 Harvard University students and applicants may have been breached by a hacker who gained access to the school's Web server.
Dubbed as the "Harvard Hacker," the University said it discovered the data breach last month but that its initial investigation did not reveal its full extent. The school is now notifying all students and applicants that their personal identification and information may have been compromised.
The network server held summaries of fall 2007 admissions applicants to the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and housing applicants for the 2006-2007 and 2007-2008 academic years. That information included approximately 6,600 admissions candidates' names, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, addresses, e-mail addresses, phone numbers, test scores, previous schools attended and school records.
However, the remainder of the admissions data that was accessed did not involve Social Security numbers, but Harvard said the hacker retrieved data from 500 students applying for housing including their Harvard University ID numbers. In addition, about 13 students' housing application summaries contained information about their personal health, including food allergies.
Harvard University will pay for identity theft recovery services from Kroll Inc for those students and applicants whose Social Security numbers or school ID numbers may have been accessed by the hacker. The free services will include assisting students with credit monitoring services and steadily obtaining copies of their credit reports.
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