Fergie's Tech Blog

Ohio University Warned Years Ago About Poor Security

Greg Sandoval writes on the C|Net Security Blog:

Three years before Ohio University discovered that the school's computer systems were essentially a security-free zone, administrators were warned that pilfering student information was easy.

Jeremy Valeda was an Ohio University senior in 2002 when he snatched Social Security numbers, grades and information about tuition payments belonging to four members of the school's then Student Senate executive board. He said he wanted to demonstrate how porous the university's computer system was, according to a story published last week in the Athens (Ohio) News.

The school apparently failed to heed Valeda's warning. Last month, Ohio University announced that hackers had repeatedly broken into at least three of the school's servers. One of the servers was compromised for at least a year and possibly for much longer.

The information compromised included social security numbers for 137,000 individuals. Some health records were also likely exposed to the data thieves.

School administrators did not respond to interview requests.

posted by Fergie @ 6/05/2006 01:50:00 PM