[IP] Harvard [and others ibl CMU ] applicants breached security
------ Forwarded Message
From: Monty Solomon <monty@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 6 Mar 2005 03:40:06 -0500
To: <undisclosed-recipient:;>
Subject: Harvard applicants breached security
Harvard applicants breached security
Tried via computer to learn status
By Hiawatha Bray and Robert Weisman, Globe Staff | March 4, 2005
For at least two hours after midnight Wednesday, a computer hacker
enabled applicants to the Harvard Business School to find out whether
they'd been accepted, weeks before Harvard planned to release the
news.
According to Harvard, more than 100 would-be graduate students took
advantage of the digital loophole, and some of them glimpsed
preliminary decisions on their applications. The loophole affected
other schools, including the Sloan School of Management at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology and business schools at
Stanford, Duke, Carnegie Mellon, and other universities. But
officials at Stanford and MIT said none of their admissions decisions
had yet been posted to their sites.
In a security breach at ApplyYourself Inc., the Fairfax, Va. company
that runs the admissions computer systems for the business schools
and 400 other colleges and universities, a hacker found a way to let
applicants peek at confidential admissions data. ''This is the first
incident of this kind," said Len Metheny, the chief executive of
ApplyYourself. ''Once we learned about it, within literally 2? hours,
we had made appropriate adjustments to the system. . . . We still
remain confident that it's a secure system."
But Steven Nelson, the executive director of Harvard's MBA program,
said their admissions data were vulnerable for nine hours, during
which 119 applicants from countries around the world tried to get at
their admissions status.
...
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2005/03/04/harvard_a
pplicants_breached_security/
------ End of Forwarded Message
-------------------------------------
You are subscribed as roessler@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
To manage your subscription, go to
http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip
Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/