Forty computers in UW-Madison's Chemistry Department were hacked and 2,920 names and Social Security numbers were potentially exposed, mostly during the past 18 months, according to an e-mail from UW-Madison spokesperson John Lucas.
UW-Madison discovered the security breach Aug. 31 ""through the use of new monitoring hardware,"" but the identity of the hacker or hackers remains unknown. Lucas said there is no evidence the infiltrations were done locally or by a member of the UW-Madison community.
""We do know the machines were used as part of an underground distribution network of music, movies, television shows and commercial software,"" he said.
Lucas said there is no evidence that documents containing the Social Security numbers—such as class rosters and grading documents—were accessed, though UW-Madison still reported the breach to law enforcement and credit reporting agencies.
An Oct. 12 letter to the affected individuals, signed by Chemistry Chair Robert Hamers and Chief Information Officer Ron Kraemer, noted that since the breach, ""departmental controlled/owned computers have been scanned to locate and remove or encrypt personal data, network monitoring has been increased, a central update service has been installed and anti-virus activity messages have been redirected to a central location for monitoring.""
The letter added that all Chemistry Department operations are now behind a restrictive firewall.
""These situations are uncommon, but an incident like this illustrates the continuing challenge for an institution of our size, which likely has tens of thousands of computers and hundreds of servers,"" Lucas said.
