More than 50,000 users had sensitive information, including drivers license and Social Security numbers, exposed during a server breach in August. The breach of a server at the community college System Office in Raleigh occurred on August 23rd, and officials were aware as of August 24th. An investigation was allegedly begun immediately, but news of the breach was just made public this week–almost four months later.

The official press release regarding the incident explains “The NC Community College System Office began notifying nearly 51,000 library users from 25 community colleges that a security breach occurred on a computer server containing their personal information, including Social Security or driver’s license numbers. All reviews and investigations indicate that no personal information was accessed by the intruder. However, library users with such information on the server will soon begin receiving letters explaining the attack, steps being taken to prevent future breaches and actions they may take to protect their credit and to ensure protection from identify theft.”

The press release describes the attack as a succesful password cracking attempt via the Internet. There are some other questions to answer regarding password complexity and/or how an attacker was able to conduct a password cracking remotely from the Internet, but had the data on the server been encrypted it would have been protected even if the actual server security was breached.  

Tags: community college, compromise, data breach, drivers license, libraries, North Carolina, social security number

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 20th, 2009 at 11:52 pm and is filed under Security Breaches & Data Loss Incidents. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.