An unknown danger actor stole about 870,000 Columbia University present and alumni and sensitive personal, financial and health information of alumni and employees after dissolving the university network in May.
Established as King’s College in 1767, Columbia University is a private Ivian League Research University, with a budget of $ 6.6 billion in 2024, including more than 20,000 employees, including 4,700 academic staff, and 19 have more than 35,000 nominee students in schools and special programs.
Following an investigation with the support of external cyber security experts, on 24 June, the law enforcement officers were discovered and informed after an outage affecting some of its systems.
In notification letters Filed On Thursday, August 7, with the Office of the Attorney General of the Main, the university stated that data violation affects 868,969 persons, including employees, applicants, current and alumni and family members.
“Our investigation determined that, on May 16, 2025, an unauthorized third-party had access to the network of Colombia and later took some files from our system,” the University of Columbia said. “To date, we have no evidence that any Columbia University Irving Medical Center was affected.”
university First confirmed Data theft in the following one statement last week, the following Reports The alleged hacker claimed that 460 gigabytes have been claimed to have stolen 460 gigabyte data from the compromised system.
On Wednesday, university Another statement issuedConfirming that stolen data belongs to the current and alumni, applicants and some Colombia employees.
According to letters sent to the affected persons through the US Postal Service, stolen data includes a combination of personal, financial and health information.
The university said, “The affected data included your name, date of birth, and social security numbers, as well as any personal information provided by you to Columbia, or if you nomination, we collected during your studies,” the university said.
“This includes your contact details, demographic information, educational history, information related to financial aid and any insurance-related information and health information that you have shared with us.”
While the University of Columbia has no evidence that data has been misused in identity theft or fraud attempts, it will provide two years free credit monitoring, fraud consultation and identity restoration services to the people affected by this data breech.