Boston College security technicians purged the Social Security numbers of its alumni after the school discovered a hacker broke into one of its on-campus systems, officials said Friday.
Jack Dunn, a Boston College spokesman, told internetnews.com that the breach involved a computer tied to the college’s fundraising phone bank.
“We’re fortunate because none of the information on the computer was
accessed,” he said. “What the forensics suggested was that the hacker had
simply been trying to bounce off our system and attack other computers on
the Internet.”
The computer in question was managed by a third-party vendor, which Dunn
declined to name. Tests on the computer suggested it didn’t contain the
latest patches.
After taking the computer offline and purging it of
Social Security numbers, it was placed behind the college’s own
firewall.
The incident has prompted officials to take a new look at how the school
identifies its students and alumni. Using Social Security numbers to identify an individual is the most convenient way, though not the only one, for
many schools to keep track of alumni, Dunn said. That applies to current students.
“That will alleviate the potential for problems going forward,” Dunn said.
“The idea is to purge Social Security numbers from all databases for the
sake of added security.”
In the meantime, he said, the IT department will look at other methods of
identification, like issuing alpha-numeric IDs.
According to a news report by the Wall Street Journal, most of the
college’s 137,000 alumni were informed of the breach in a recent newsletter,
and were warned to contact their credit bureaus and banks as an added
protection against their information being used fraudulently.
