University Computing Services said that a hacker breached a university server and defaced student and faculty web pages.
The intrusion happened early Monday morning and was announced in a campuswide e-mail Tuesday afternoon.
The server hosted some iWeb accounts, individual Web hosting accounts for the university community, said Kevin Gingerich, security group leader for UCS.
The University found out about the intrusion when a user reported that his or her website had been defaced.
UCS said that no confidential university information was compromised and no other servers were breached.
Eugene Spafford, director of Purdue's Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security, said defacement isn't very common anymore. He said hackers are usually more interested in financial records. That type of attack usually targets institutional sites rather than personal ones. Universities with medical schools have recently been a big target, as hackers try to access personal information such as credit card numbers and social security numbers in patient medical records, said Spafford.
"Defacement is generally the mark of people who aren't sophisticated computer criminals," said Spafford. "They do it for bragging rights."
Spafford said that the most common types of defacement on college campuses are graffiti and adding links to malicious software.
The server was taken down while UCS investigates, said Gingerich. The server was backed up two hours before the intrusion, and UCS is duplicating the data onto a new server.
Gingerich said the breached server is being kept offline and "forensically intact" as the investigation continues. He said that UCS had "a general idea of how, but not who" carried out the attack.
UCS has not contacted any law enforcement agencies, Gingerich said, but may once it finds more information.
Sara LaChat, UCS support coordinator, said the security group was working "around the clock" to determine the exact cause of the intrusion.
Gingerich said at approximately 4:30 p.m. Wednesday that UCS believed the hacker took advantage of a Microsoft security vulnerability the company announced Friday. He said UCS was working with Microsoft to confirm this.
Microsoft said in an e-mail to the Daily News at approximately 6:30 p.m. Wednesday that the company and the University determined the hacker could not have taken advantage of that vulnerability. UCS had closed at the time of the e-mail, so this could not be confirmed at press time.
Spafford said that three leading causes of security breaches on college campuses are software vulnerabilities, administrator error and users failing to secure their account.
Spafford said if it is a software vulnerability that allowed the security breach, then it is fixable, but sometimes expensive.
Gingerich said UCS was taking steps to protect similar servers from attacks of the same nature.
In the e-mail, UCS reminded students and faculty not to use iWeb space to post any confidential information.
Read More
Three Air Jam teams take home the win
October 12, 2012Nineteen teams shimmied, shook and flipped for a sold out John R. Emens Auditorium on Thursday night during the 25th annual Air Jam.
Bill Clinton Speaks at North Central High School
October 12, 2012Former President's Speech Could Have Effect on State Senate Race
