Back in January, DataBreaches.net reported that Metropolitan State University had acknowledged that they had been hacked. As I reported at that time, a teenage hacker from Australia, who used the Twitter name @Abdilo, had previously claimed in December that he had hacked them via SQL injection, and he thanked them for 22,000 Social Security numbers. They were only one of dozens of education sector hacks Abdilo claimed to have executed SQL injections on because of their “idiotic security.” Abdilo has since had his home raided by law enforcement in Australia.
Now Metropolitan State University seems to have updated their disclosure. Pioneer Press reported today that MSU says that
a hacker could have accessed data on about 160,000 past and present students in December, but no financial information was exposed.
They are now also providing more details on the type of data involved:
The St. Paul school said the data included names, birth dates, contact information and grades. The school said the last four digits of the Social Security numbers of about 11,000 students also likely were exposed; those students will be notified by mail.
Metro State said in February that 900 faculty members from 2004-09 had their Social Security numbers exposed. The staff were offered identity protection services.
“Likely exposed?” Abdilo claimed in December that there were 22k SSN. I wonder if Australian law enforcement is sharing anything they find on Abdilo’s computers – if he’s turned over his encryption keys and hadn’t destroyed the data he had hacked.
I also wonder – no, hope – that Metro State saw the message Abdilo included to them in his February paste – months after the initial hack and their disclosure of it:
Metrostate.edu illy for publicly announcing you got sqli’d, but check your subdomains you are still vuln to sqli <3.