Yale warns 43,000 about 10-month-long data breach

Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, has notified about 43,000 faculty, staff, students, and alumni that their names and Social Security numbers were publicly available via Google search.

August 22, 2011, Computerworld -- (International) Yale warns 43,000 about 10-month-long data breach. Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, has notified about 43,000 faculty, staff, students, and alumni that their names and Social Security numbers were publicly available via Google search for about 10 months.

All of the victims were affiliated with Yale in 1999, and are being offered identity theft insurance and free credit monitoring services for 2 years, the university said in a statement the week of August 15.

The breach resulted when a File Transfer Protocol (FTP) server on which the data was stored became searchable via Google as the result of a change the search engine giant made in September 2010, the Yale Daily News reported.

The online publication reported that the Yale IT services director said the FTP server holding the compromised information was used mainly for open-source materials.

Link: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9219369/Yale_warns_43_000_about_10_month_long_data_breach

Source: DHS Daily Open Source Infrastructure Report 24 August 2011