A couple of days ago, I discussed the issue of hackers constantly trying to break into universities to acquire sensitive information on students, faculty and alumni, but that is not all.  It seems that within the middle of this last month, various hackers have been issuing out phishing emails to thousands of students from a variety of universities to see what kind of personal information they can get directly from the source.  Their strategy?  Masquerade themselves as the student help desk and request the student verify their information.  The success rate?  Sadly, it is probably working pretty well.

In an ongoing attack, students and faculty at nearly a dozen universities and colleges have been targeted by phishing e-mails since the middle of January. The e-mail messages masquerade as missives from each school’s help desk, asking that the student confirm their username and password as well as requesting more personal information, including date of birth and country of origin.

The attacks, which appear to have started as early as January 20 and are ongoing, have targeted a few thousand e-mail addresses at each school, according to reports posted to two security mailing lists used by school information-technology professionals.

“The attacks are fairly widespread (with)in U.S. .edu,” Douglas Pearson, technical director of the Research and Education Network (REN) Information Sharing and Analysis Center (ISAC), stated in an e-mail interview. “We’ve seen large, small, public, and private institutions attacked.”[more]

Tags: Computer Protection