A Princeton College database was compromised in a cyberattack on November 10, exposing the non-public data of alumni, donors, college members, and college students.
In response to a FAQ web page issued on Saturday, the menace actors breached Princeton’s techniques by focusing on a College worker in a phishing assault.
This allowed them to achieve entry to “biographical data pertaining to College fundraising and alumni engagement actions,” together with names, e mail addresses, phone numbers, and residential and enterprise addresses saved within the compromised database.
Nevertheless, Princeton officers famous that the database did not include monetary information, credentials, or data protected by privateness rules.
“The database that was compromised doesn’t typically include Social Safety numbers, passwords, or monetary data akin to bank card or checking account numbers,” stated Daren Hubbard, Vice President for Info Know-how and Chief Info Officer, and Kevin Heaney, Vice President for Development.
“The database doesn’t include detailed pupil data lined by federal privateness legal guidelines or information about employees workers until they’re donors.”
Primarily based on the contents of the compromised database, the college believes that the next teams doubtless had their information uncovered within the data breach:
- All College alumni (together with anybody ever enrolled as a pupil at Princeton, even when they didn’t graduate)
- Alumni spouses and companions
- Widows and widowers of alumni
- Any donor to the College
- Mother and father of scholars (present and previous)
- Present college students
- School and employees (present and previous)
The non-public Ivy League analysis college has since blocked the attackers’ entry to the database and believes they had been unable to entry different techniques on its community earlier than being evicted.
Doubtlessly affected people are suggested to be cautious of any messages claiming to be from the college that request they share delicate information, akin to passwords, Social Safety numbers, or financial institution data.
“When you have any doubts about whether or not a communication you obtain from Princeton College is authentic, please confirm its legitimacy with a recognized College individual earlier than clicking on any hyperlinks or downloading any attachment,” the officers added.
A spokesperson for Princeton College redirected us to the FAQ web page when requested in regards to the variety of people affected by the data breach and whether or not the attackers had made a ransom demand.
When you have any data relating to this incident or every other undisclosed assaults, you’ll be able to contact us confidentially by way of Sign at 646-961-3731 or at suggestions@bleepingcomputer.com.
UPenn data breach
In early November, the College of Pennsylvania, one other non-public Ivy League analysis college, confirmed that information stolen in an October cyberattack had been exfiltrated from inside community techniques associated to Penn’s improvement and alumni actions.
As BleepingComputer first reported, the menace actors breached UPenn’s techniques utilizing a stolen worker PennKey SSO account, which gave them entry to the college’s Salesforce occasion, SAP enterprise intelligence system, SharePoint recordsdata, and Qlik analytics platform.
They then stole 1.71 GB of inside paperwork from the college’s SharePoint and Field storage platforms, in addition to the Salesforce donor advertising database, which contained 1.2 million data.
Whereas the 2 incidents are comparable, Princeton officers stated over the weekend that they presently don’t have any “factual data indicating that this assault is related or associated to every other incident.”
Replace November 17, 14:53 EST: Added Princeton assertion.
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