Fergie's Tech Blog

Hacker, Thieves Obtain Ohio State University ID Data

Bill Bush writes on the Columbus Dispatch:

A hacker broke into an Ohio State University computer two weekends ago and stole the names, Social Security numbers, employee ID numbers and birth dates of more than 14,000 current and former faculty and staff members, the university said today.

And in a separate incident, the same information about 3,500 OSU chemistry students dating back a decade — including Social Security numbers and grades — were on two laptops stolen from the home of a professor in late February, the university said.

Ohio State apologized in letters sent Saturday to the staff and students whose information was stolen, university spokesman Jim Lynch said. Those affected will be offered a year of free credit protection from a private company to help them guard against the criminal misuse of their identities, he said.

In the case of the staff's information, Lynch said, someone using a foreign Internet address broke through a computer firewall the weekend of March 31-April 1 and accessed more than 14,000 records from an Office of Research database of about 190,000 current and former university employees.

posted by Fergie @ 4/17/2007 12:27:00 PM