Columbia University hack exposes higher ed cyber gaps

A smiling image of President Trump reportedly flashed across Columbia’s campus monitors June 24 as a hacker shut down key computer systems and claimed to steal 1.6 gigabytes of data on 2.5 million student applications. A hacker later told Bloomberg one aim of the breach was to probe whether the university has defied a 2023 Supreme Court ban on affirmative action. Columbia has stayed mostly silent about the incident and hired CrowdStrike to investigate the breach’s full impact. One university official told Information Security Media Group the incident appears politically motivated.

“The university’s investigation has indicated the hackers are highly sophisticated and were very targeted in their theft of documents,” a university official said Thursday. “They broke in and stole student data with the apparent goal of furthering their political agenda.”

Columbia declined to comment on how it discovered the breach or what steps it is taking to secure systems. Elite schools like Columbia – not to mention less plush public colleges – face core problems of budget and culture, said Travis Rosiek, public sector chief technology officer at Rubrik and former red team director at the Defense Information Systems Agency.

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