Chinese Hackers Target U.S. University With Government Ties
A prominent American university with ties to the Defense Department and intelligence agencies is the latest target of Chinese hackers.
Last week, the University of Virginia, located in Charlottesville, about a three-hour drive from Washington, D.C., announced that it had suffered an intrusion “originating from China” that led the school to shut down portions of its technology systems and required students and faculty to reset their passwords used for accessing email and other applications hosted on the school’s systems.
But unlike some China-based intrusions that attempt to steal personal information such as Social Security and financial account numbers from large numbers of people, this one targeted two university employees “whose work has a connection to China,” university spokesperson Anthony P. de Bruyn told The Daily Beast.
The attackers “accessed the email accounts” of the employees, he said, without specifying what information they may have stolen. Officials hired noted computer security firm Mandiant to investigate the breach in June, after the school learned from federal authorities that it had been hacked. Mandiant has extensive experience conducting forensic analysis of computer systems that have been overrun by Chinese hackers, some of whom it has linked to the Chinese military and the country’s intelligence apparatus.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/08/21/chinese-hackers-target-u-s-university-with-government-ties.html
