University of Maine Servers Compromised

The Maine Legislature and the University of Maine are the fresh victims of hackers, though it is believed that the two attacks bear no similarity.

A legislative website and two university servers have been hacked. One website is still offline and the police are investigating. The systems might have been infected via viruses. It is also believed that hackers might have stolen the birthdates, social security numbers and acquired other sensitive information of several thousand students and alumni who have taken the services of University of Maine over the past eight years. They have also compromised their clinical information.

According to the University Police, hackers also broke into the information from the counseling center of the Orono campus. Robert Dana, Vice President for Student Affairs and Dean of Students, stated that students or alumni who visited the affected counseling center between August 8, 2002 and June 12, 2010 should presume themselves to be in the compromised database, reported Bangor Daily News on June 29, 2010.

Dana further said that it was the dangerous breach into the legal privacy expected by the University students, reported Maine News Simply on June 29, 2010. He added that the hackers who do the business of misusing the society's needs and capability to store information have crossed the explicable limit of wickedness. As a result, all the possible resources are being engaged to discover the origin of these assaults.

Reportedly, the police investigation kicked off on June 16, 2010 after the staff at the Counseling Center faced trouble in accessing files. The University Police are working in association with the computer crimes experts from the US Secret Service and the US Attorney's Office.

In the meantime, Maine Legislature also released a notification informing that one of its websites have been compromised and infected with malware. This site used to keep a regular eye on a bill's status is currently offline.

Scott Clark, IT Director at the Maine Legislature, stated that users who had logged on to the website on June 24 could have offered clicks on the links allowing malware to get into their PCs, as per the statement published by MPBN on June 29, 2010.

Related article: University Reports Increase in Spam

» SPAMfighter News - 7/12/2010