Columbia University has confirmed a major cyberattack that compromised the personal data of more than 2.5 million students, employees, and applicants, according to The New York Post. The breach, which occurred on June 24, is believed to have been carried out by a politically motivated hacker or "hacktivist".
According to reports, the attacker managed to take down the university's systems for several hours and accessed highly sensitive information, including Social Security numbers, citizenship status, university ID numbers, admissions decisions, and employee salaries.
A university official told The Post the savvy hacker appeared to target specific documents to advance their political agenda. The incident is currently under investigation, and Columbia University is working with cybersecurity experts to assess the full impact and prevent future breaches.
"We immediately began an investigation with the assistance of leading cybersecurity experts and, after substantial analysis, determined that the outage was caused by an unauthorised party," Columbia University said in a statement Tuesday.
"We now have initial indications that the unauthorised actor also unlawfully stole data from a limited portion of our network. We are investigating the scope of the apparent theft and will share our findings with the University community as well as anyone whose personal information was compromised."
"We have not observed threat actor activity on our network since June 24 and will continue to monitor closely for further unlawful activity in our systems."
The individual responsible for the extensive data breach at Columbia University claimed responsibility in an anonymous message to Bloomberg News, which verified the stolen files. The hacker, who remained anonymous, stated that their motive was to uncover evidence of affirmative action in admissions, a practice recently outlawed by the Supreme Court.
The stolen data, totalling 1.6 gigabytes, allegedly includes 2.5 million applications spanning several decades, along with sensitive information regarding financial aid packages.
