Virgina cyber attack exposes more than 175,000 campus affiliates
16 November, 2011
category: Education
Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) released a statement regarding an incident of unauthorized access to a campus computing server. The VCU server housed files with the personal information on more than 175,000 current and former faculty, staff, students and affiliates.
Servers supporting a VCU system uncovered suspicious files on one of its servers. During forensic investigation, subsequent analysis then showed the intruders had compromised a second server – thru the first server attack – which contained data on 176,567 individuals.
Data items included either a name or eID, Social Security Number and, in some cases, date of birth, contact information, and various programmatic or departmental information.
Officials asserted the likelihood is very low that any personal data on the individuals in the files was compromised, but it is still notifying all involved via email and first-class mail.