UMaine Encounters Phishing Assault

The University of Maine faced an unfortunate situation when a few of its students and staff became victims of cyber-crime. A total of 86 students and employees from the school were so deceived that they unwittingly gave away their passwords to fraudsters.

Dan Demeritt Spokesman of UMaine declared that the victimized individuals were lured into divulging their passwords for accessing certain document that in reality was fraudulent. Bangordailynews.com posted this, December 23, 2016.

Once passwords got leaked, the fraudsters utilized them for gaining admission into 'university self-service employees A/Cs' that possibly enabled them to acquire admission into the personal financial details of every individual, especially Social Security Numbers and bank account credentials.

University officials carrying out routine monitoring job noticed the illegitimate operations. They caution that anybody while trying to access the false document via the utilization of their maine.edu passwords could be endangered.

According to Demeritt, there wasn't any attack on the school's data systems nor were they hacked. The system hadn't still unearthed a victim from other universities belonging to the state; however, Maine school's IT personnel as well as those working in other universities were still investigating.

Chief Information Security Officer John Forker urged on Friday that the university's members must exercise extreme caution while sharing personal credentials else PII (personal identifying information). Actually, being personally vigilant and involved was vital in safeguarding one's online identities as well as information against assaults, he added.

Demeritt further stated that UMaine was on job for contacting everybody who might be victimized while providing free ID-theft monitoring function to them. The university had as well informed the Maine Office of Attorney General.

The current phishing scam seemingly has put a much smaller number of students in danger compared to the data-hack at UMaine during 2012 when on-campus PC shops at University-of-Arkansas and UMaine that shared one common server faced a hacking attack which hijacked info belonging to 2,800-and-more people while leaked 1,175 SSNs and 435 payment card numbers.

Further details regarding the phishing scheme can be obtained from www.umaine.edu/informationcenter, while full information regarding the way ID-theft can be avoided alternatively how a victim should respond.

» SPAMfighter News - 12/30/2016