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Title: Hacker With 'Political Agenda' Stole Data From Columbia, University
Says

Link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/07/03/0012...

A politically motivated hacker breached Columbia University's IT systems,
stealing vast amounts of sensitive student and employee data -- including
admissions decisions and Social Security numbers. The Record reports: The
hacker reportedly provided Bloomberg News with 1.6 gigabytes of data they
claimed to have stolen from the university, including information from 2.5
million applications going back decades. The stolen data the outlet reviewed
reportedly contains details on whether applicants were rejected or accepted,
their citizenship status, their university ID numbers and which academic
programs they sought admission to. While the hacker's claims have not been
independently verified, Bloomberg said it compared data provided by the
hacker to that belonging to eight Columbia applicants seeking admission
between 2019 and 2024 and found it matched. The threat actor reportedly told
Bloomberg he was seeking information that would indicate whether the
university continues to use affirmative action in admissions despite a 2023
Supreme Court decision prohibiting the practice. The hacker told Bloomberg he
obtained 460 gigabytes of data in total -- after spending two months
targeting and penetrating increasingly privileged layers of the university's
servers -- and said he harvested information about financial aid packages,
employee pay and at least 1.8 million Social Security numbers belonging to
employees, applicants, students and their family members.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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