Columbia University says its IT system was hacked
Columbia University said Tuesday an outage that impacted its IT systems on campus last week was the result of a hacker.
The university previously said its systems "experienced an outage" on June 24 and that it was working with the NYPD to investigate it.
On Tuesday, , saying an "unauthorized actor also unlawfully stole data from a limited portion of our network."
Here's Columbia's full statement:
Last week, we reported a technical outage that disrupted certain of our IT systems. We immediately began an investigation with the assistance of leading cybersecurity experts and after substantial analysis determined that the outage was caused by an unauthorized party. While the investigation is ongoing, we have restored our operations. We now have initial indications that the unauthorized 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.
It is believed whoever attacked the school's IT system was a "hacktivist," and targeted very specific student documents. The incident was not a ransomware attack.
The full extent of the data the hacker got ahold of may take months to figure out.
The incident comes as Columbia faces intense scrutiny over its response to protests on campus following the Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel by Hamas.
