Students of Oberlin College (Ohio), Grinnell College (Iowa), and Hamilton College (New York) were victims of a data breach where their personal information was accessed from the college admission database. The three colleges use a platform called Technosolutions’ Slate that stores the information of students who applied for admission. Passwords of employees were phished which lead to access of the network and a takeover of the databases that could also have come from a Google Chrome code error. An exact number of students has not been released, but it is believed that each student was asked for a ransom in order to get their information back. Initially, one Bitcoin which equals $3,800 USD was asked for, but it was reduced to around $60 USD worth of Bitcoin. Technosolutions reached out to the colleges and asked to “review the security practices of their single sign-on and password reset systems.” None of the colleges have released a statement regarding the matter at the time of writing this article.
Analyst Notes
Students who may be affected should speak with representatives of their colleges to determine what they are going to do to fix and contain the matter. Google Chrome should also be updated immediately.
