1,600 accounts of personal data stolen during the hacking of Berkeley’s University Servers
On December 16, it was reported that the details of some 1,600 people were stolen from The University of California – Berkley, including Social Security numbers and credit card information . The theft covered the period starting from the 90s until May 2014.
The University said in a statement that the attack occurred on the servers of the estate division, which is engaged in maintaining and building the university’s facilities.1,300 cases were stolen social security numbers and 300 credit card numbers, and many of them belong to current and former employees of the university, along with companies with business ties with this division .
The statement said that there is no evidence that the burglars used the stolen information and victims have been been updated with information about the break-in to examine any misuse of their information. Director of the university’s information security encouraged those affected by the break-in to take advantage of the credit card monitoring service that the university provides.
It was reported that the division has started to implement a number of new protocols and procedures to prevent recurrence of such incidents in the future and that the university technology department encourage all departments to re-examine their information security policy.
The break-in was discovered in September and the affected servers were removed from the network. In the following weaks the university authorities examined the information stored in order to find the information leaked and the factors affected by this. The compromised servers included a large volume of information, and as a consequence the university hired the testing of an external company. Consequently to this testing, the university began sending letters to those concerned on the 12th December.
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