On Friday morning, University of Pennsylvania alumni, students, staff, and community members received several emails from a hacker claiming to be from the University's Graduate School of Education (GSE).
“We have terrible security practices and are completely meritocratic,” the email said. “We love breaking federal regulations like FERPA (all the data gets leaked).”
A partially redacted email sent by a hacker who gained access to the University of Pennsylvania's email system. Image credit: TechCrunch (screenshot)
The messages purported to come from various Penn-related email accounts, including GSE, as well as several senior staff members across the university.
Other Penn affiliates also received this email multiple times from various senders with official @upenn.edu email addresses. (Disclosure: As an alumnus and former employee of the university, I have received messages to my personal email address three times.)
Penn State spokesperson Ron Ozio told TechCrunch in an email Friday that the school's incident response team is “aggressively addressing” the situation.
“A fraudulent email has been circulated that appears to come from the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education. This is clearly a fake, and there is nothing in this highly offensive and harmful message that reflects the mission or actions of Penn or Penn GSE,” the spokesperson said.
The breach appears to be aimed at suppressing alumni donations, as the hackers explicitly state in their message (“Please stop giving us money”). The violations also come shortly after the university publicly rejected an offer from the White House to make commitments in line with the Trump administration's political agenda in exchange for federal funding. Penn and six other schools rejected the White House's proposal.
The White House's Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education calls on universities to eliminate affirmative action in hiring and admissions and to discipline faculty who “deliberately punish, marginalize, or even incite violence against conservative ideas.”
Parties would also be required to freeze tuition fees for five years, provide tuition-free education to students pursuing “hard sciences,” limit undergraduate admissions from overseas to 15%, and require standardized tests such as the SAT for admission.
The agreement also requires schools to enforce policies that marginalize transgender and gender nonconforming students.
“[The compact] University of Pennsylvania President J. Larry Jameson wrote in a response to Education Secretary Linda McMahon posted on the university's website.
“Unilateral conditions are inconsistent with the diversity of viewpoints and freedom of expression that are central to how universities contribute to democracy and society,” Professor Jameson wrote.