Skip to main content
Add as a preferred source on Google


Consensus: Decentralized IT Led to Boulder Hack

  • By Paul McCloskey
  • 06/08/07
The University of Colorado at Boulder reported that a hacker May 12 exposed about 45,000 students' names and Social Security numbers. The incident affected students enrolled at any time from 2002 to the present, the school said.

The hacked server was in the College of Arts and Sciences' academic advising center. Dan Jones, director of the Campus IT Security Office, told the Denver Post that the center's firewall was turned off, and a patch was not properly installed on the system's anti-virus program.

School administrators said they would cut their practice of distributing IT responsibilities among colleges, schools, departments, and programs and assigned the school's central information technology department to take over the IT management of the center.

University officials also told the Post they do not believe the hacker targeted students' personal information. "It looked like someone was trying to seize control of the machine and not the data,"' a school spokesman told the newspaper. "And in the process of that, the data was exposed. But we're erring on the side of caution."

Read More:

About the Author

Paul McCloskey is contributing editor of Syllabus.

Featured

  • Robot typing on fluorescent keyboard

    The Wrong Battle: Why Your Institution's AI Policy Is Probably Solving the Wrong Problem

    The conversation on most campuses has become consumed with detection: How do we catch students using AI when they shouldn't? The impulse to protect academic integrity is legitimate, but the detection-first approach has a fatal flaw.

  • Abstract futuristic digital network with glowing padlock icons

    Microsoft Intros New Agentic AI Security Multi-Model Defense System

    A new multi-model agentic AI security system built by Microsoft's Autonomous Code Security team helped researchers find 16 new vulnerabilities across the Windows networking and authentication stack, the company anounced in a recent security blog post.

  • Abstract digital data stream with binary code and colorful light trails

    Microsoft Releases Open Source AI Safety Tools for Agent Development

    Microsoft released RAMPART and Clarity as open-source projects intended to help developers test AI agents earlier in the software lifecycle and turn red-team findings into repeatable engineering checks.

  • abstract smartphone translucent screen displaying AI interface

    Apple Introduces Redesigned Siri AI

    At its recent Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple introduced Siri AI, a redesigned version of its voice assistant that Apple describes in its own announcement as "a profoundly more capable and personal assistant." The update is intended to make Siri more conversational, more context-aware, and more useful across iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and Vision Pro.