Colleges continue to be popular targets for hackers, who crave their Internet access, processing power and data, according to this report from eSecurityPlanet.
Eastern Washington University this week is notifying more than 130,000 current and former students that their personal information — including Social Security numbers and birth dates — may have been accessed by a hacker sometime in the past year.
University officials said they discovered the data breach during an assessment of the school’s network last month. The IT staff also discovered that the hacker has installed software to store and share video files on the school’s systems.
Eastern Washington University, located in Cheney, Wash., is one of dozens of college and universities to fess up to massive data breaches in the past year.
“EWU regrets that anyone’s personal information may have been subject to unauthorized disclosure,” President Rodolfo Arevalo said in a statement. “The university is taking this matter seriously and is committed to maintaining everyone’s privacy.”