Hackers Hit Harvard

March 14, 2008 — -- It's one of the hardest schools in America to get into, but not for hackers.

Last month, at least one hacker launched an attack on a computer server at Harvard University, potentially viewing the personal information of up to 10,000 graduate students and applicants to the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and posting some of the information on the Web.

Harvard officials began notifying thousands of students and applicants this week that some of their personal information, in some cases Social Security numbers, may have been accessed.

According to Harvard chief information officer Dan Moriarty, an attack was launched Feb. 16 on a server that contained summary information from applications for prospective students as well as the housing information of current students. About 6,600 of those applications included Social Security numbers.

The following day, the school took the server offline for five days to investigate the source of the attack.

Some of the information on the server was copied and ultimately posted on The Pirate Bay, a well-known bit torrent Web site where people can download movies and music.

For a short time, they could also access housing information and student ID numbers of a small number of Harvard graduate students. No Social Security numbers were posted on the site.

The university isn't sure whether thousands of more sensitive bits of information have been posted or used, hence the notification of anyone with personal information on the server.

"If you can, imagine the server like a pie. There was a slice of the pie that we know was copied and referenced," Moriarty said. "We cannot rule out that this [other] information may have been accessed."

The school is offering free access to credit monitoring services and credit reports to people whose information was exposed.

"We had an aggressive security program in place before and obviously we are continuing with that today," Moriarty said. "Our primary focus today has been on the individuals that may be impacted."