:: Deepquest ::

George Mason University confirmed on Monday that the personal information of more than 30,000 students, faculty and staff had been nabbed by online intruders.
The attackers broke into a server that held details used on campus identity cards, the university said. Joy Hughes, the school’s vice president for information technology, said in an internal e-mail sent over the weekend and seen by CNET News.com that “the server contained the names, photos, Social Security numbers and (campus ID) numbers of all members of the Mason community who have identification cards.”

Hughes warned that campus community members should contact the major credit bureaus to flag their accounts for possible identity fraud. “It appears that the hackers were looking for access to other campus systems rather than specific data,” Hughes wrote. “However, it is possible that the data on the server could be used for identity theft.”

George Mason is a public university located in Fairfax, Va., a suburb of Washington, DC, with smaller campuses in Arlington, Va., and Prince William County. It reported 26,796 students enrolled as of fall 2002, and 3,908 faculty and staff members.

It also is home to the Information Security Institute, the Lab for Information Security Technology and the Center for Secure Information Systems, which has been designated a “Center of Academic Excellence” by the U.S. National Security Agency.

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