Today, officials at the University of Nebraska at Kearny released a press release that informed current and former students of a data breach that took place last month on nine computers on campus. Although all the computers were affected were desktops, there are going to be an increase in the data regulations and security policies implemented on campus computing facilities. In all, over 2,000 people are now potential victims of identity theft.
According to the press release, the breach took place on June 8 and was noticed and responded to on June 9. No word on why the university took almost a month to alert its students and alumni of the breach, although the release did note that a thorough and complete investigation of the matter had taken place. After this investigation, the breach was traced back to individuals in the Republic of Slovenia. The departments affected by this intrusion include History, Biology, Psychology, Computer Science, Math, and Sociology. Two computers in History, Biology, and Psychology were affected, while only one computer was accessed in each of the other departments. Students impacted by this were either History advisees in 2002-2003, or deciding students in 2001-2002, or students enrolled in the Masters of Science in Biology program that takes place online.

At this point, there have been no reports of any illegal activities taking place from the data gathered illegally. Such information included social security numbers, names, addresses, and bank routing numbers. The release said that there is no indication that there was any effort to use the information for illicit purposes or if it was even stolen from the systems. One proposed possibility for the breach was to use the computer’s processing power to help spread spam to all computers on campus, although the validity behind this claim has yet to be proven. Letters to this affect and that spell out necessary actions to take are being sent out to the 2, 035 people involved in the breach.

The university has spelled out that this is the first breach of its kind to affected Kearny. Officials with the information systems and services department have assured the student body that they have numerous security features in place to prevent this type of intrusion, including firewalls and encryption services.

Those affected will only receive a letter. The university will not contact anyone by email or phone and individuals are advised to not give their social security number out to anyone inquiring for the information over the phone or online. Authorities suggest that students file fraud alerts with credit card companies and the credit bureaus. For those now familiar with how to go about these procedures, they can contact the FTC. There is also the possibility of subscribing to ID theft services, such as Lifelock. Lifelock contacts all three credit bureaus and alerts consumers whenever a new credit card or loan application is filed, which helps stop identity theft before it starts.