Personal info, SSNs of 475,000 Exposed in Data Breach at 2 Universities

[mandy]

A 25-year-old San Diego man has been charged with hacking into the University of Southern California's online application system and nabbing personal data from prospective students...

Michael Zweiback, an assistant U.S. attorney in the cybercrimes and intellectual property unit, said that the case reflects a growing trend among hackers.

"Universities are becoming bigger and bigger targets to the hacker community because they are large institutions...and hackers always want to see if they can beat the technical people on the other side," Zweiback said...

full article: http://news.com.com/Man+charged+with+hac...g=nefd.top

EDIT TO ADD: The personal data of 275,000 prospective USC students was exposed in this data breach

[mandy]

Yet another data breach at an American university.

Nearly 200,000 electronic records at the University of Texas' Business School have been illegally accessed, officials said. It was the school's second major breach in three years.

The university said it learned late Friday that some Social Security numbers and possibly biographical material of students, alumni, faculty and staff might have been accessed...

full article: http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-na-...technology

[Kristijntje]

Another large university security breach:

Western Illinois University is notifying more than 180,000 people that their personal data is at risk after hackers entered its networks...

Perhaps one of the strongest indicators of the level of security at U.S. universities is that even after a string of major breaches at such places as Ohio University, Notre Dame University and the University of Texas, hackers continue to find their way into college computer systems.

The pervasiveness of security breaches there stem, in part, from the way educational institutions are set up. Universities and colleges desire an exchange of ideas and information and, as a result, maintain relatively open networks. Security experts have noted that this situation may well be to blame for security breaches at institutions...

full article: http://news.com.com/2100-7349_3-6090860....g=nefd.top