Hackers threaten to leak University of Pennsylvania student data

“We’ve been hacked,” members of the University of Pennsylvania community were told in the subject line of several emails sent from addresses linked to its Graduate School of Education. It appears that the sender was the potential hacker or the hackers themselves.

The emails received by several alumni, including A. edge The author, who attended the University of Pennsylvania. “We have terrible security practices and are completely undemocratic. We hire morons and admit them because we love legacies, donors, and unqualified affirmative action recognition. We love breaking federal laws like FERPA (all your data will be leaked) and Supreme Court rulings like SFFA. Please stop giving us money.”

The apparent hacker or hackers indicated Family Educational Rights and Privacy Actwhich protects the privacy of students’ personal information shared with schools. SFFA appears to be a reference to Students for Fair Admissions, the group that was at the forefront of the Supreme Court ruling that struck down race-based affirmative action for college admissions.

Penn acknowledged the existence of the messages in a statement on its website. “A fraudulent email that appears to come from a Penn GSE account is currently circulating with the subject line ‘We have been compromised (action required)’ or similar,” the message read. “The University’s Office of Information Security is aware of the situation, and its Incident Response Team is actively addressing it.” In a statement “Nothing in the deeply offensive and hurtful letter reflects the mission or actions of Penn or Penn GSE,” the school says on its communications website.