UMD Data Breach - Letter from President Loh

The University of Maryland ^ | 2/19/2014 | President Loh

[VanShuyten]

Dear students, faculty, and staff of the University of Maryland (at College Park and Shady Grove):

Last evening, I was notified by Brian Voss, Vice President of Information Technology, that the University of Maryland was the victim of a sophisticated computer security attack that exposed records containing personal information.

I am truly sorry. Computer and data security are a very high priority of our University.

A specific database of records maintained by our IT Division was breached yesterday. That database contained 309,079 records of faculty, staff, students and affiliated personnel from the College Park and Shady Grove campuses who have been issued a University ID since 1998. The records included name, Social Security number, date of birth, and University identification number. No other information was compromised -- no financial, academic, health, or contact (phone, address) information.

[VanShuyten]

Over 300,000 people are affected by this. SS#, name, date of birth, and student ID numbers were stolen. Even though the university president says no other information was taken, what has been lifted is plenty for fake IDs. Another report says the university doesn't really know the extent of the data breach.

[Nervous Tick]

>> Computer and data security are a very high priority of our University.

“...but since we’re uber-liberal, in practice we hire not by merit, but to serve whatever race/gender/sexual preference goals are currently in vogue. Therefore we have mainly liberal dumbasses working in our IT department. Think “Obamacare Website”.

So Gaia only knows *what* *actually* happens to your precious data, in spite of our lip service to data security.”

[LegendHasIt]

I don’t suppose the hacker might like to try Occidental, Columbia and Harvard to find the records of a certain pResident?

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

If I had a son, he would look like somebody whose data were stolen from a UMD computer.

Maryland “Freak State” PING!

[Bigg Red]

The records included name, Social Security number, date of birth, and University identification number.

&&&
I am far from techno-savvy, but it seems to me that the thieves have gotten plenty with that matching info.

Of course, lots of people have had to put out all of that info and more on the Obamacare websites.

[Albion Wilde]

The records included name, Social Security number, date of birth, and University identification number. No other information was compromised -- no financial, academic, health, or contact (phone, address) information.

Oh, ok, just your date of birth and social. Thank heavens for that! /sarc