The Academic Advising Center of the University of Colorado's College of Arts and Science made the mistake of not applying a patch to its Symantec Corporation anti-virus management console which resulted in the compromise of a server containing the names and Social Security numbers of nearly 45,000 students. According to Dan Jones, director for campus IT security, the intrusion was discovered May 12 by the university's security staff when the compromised server started scanning other Internet-connected systems, including those on campus, for the same Symantec flaw.
None of data on the system appears to have been compromised in the incident but the university is alerting affected individuals, students enrolled at the university from 2002 to present, all the same in keeping with its notification policy, Jones said. He added that no other servers appear to have been infected. In addition, the university is continuing with its efforts to purge Social Security numbers from all CU-Boulder computers in all departments. The infected server was taken offline following the discovery of the breach, and all applications needed by the Advising Center were brought up on another server that is being managed by the university's central IT organization. Measures are also underway to bring all IT operations at the Arts and Sciences Advising Center under the control of the central IT department, Jones said.
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