A Princeton College database was compromised in a cyberattack on November 10, exposing the private info of alumni, donors, college members, and college students.
In accordance with a FAQ web page issued on Saturday, the risk actors breached Princeton’s methods by concentrating on a College worker in a phishing assault.
This allowed them to realize entry to “biographical info pertaining to College fundraising and alumni engagement actions,” together with names, electronic mail addresses, phone numbers, and residential and enterprise addresses saved within the compromised database.
Nonetheless, Princeton officers famous that the database did not comprise monetary data, credentials, or data protected by privateness rules.
“The database that was compromised doesn’t usually comprise Social Safety numbers, passwords, or monetary info reminiscent of bank card or checking account numbers,” stated Daren Hubbard, Vice President for Info Know-how and Chief Info Officer, and Kevin Heaney, Vice President for Development.
“The database doesn’t comprise detailed scholar data coated by federal privateness legal guidelines or knowledge about workers workers except they’re donors.”
Based mostly on the contents of the compromised database, the college believes that the next teams doubtless had their knowledge uncovered within the knowledge breach:
- All College alumni (together with anybody ever enrolled as a scholar at Princeton, even when they didn’t graduate)
- Alumni spouses and companions
- Widows and widowers of alumni
- Any donor to the College
- Mother and father of scholars (present and previous)
- Present college students
- College and workers (present and previous)
The personal Ivy League analysis college has since blocked the attackers’ entry to the database and believes they have been unable to entry different methods on its community earlier than being evicted.
Probably affected people are suggested to be cautious of any messages claiming to be from the college that request they share delicate knowledge, reminiscent of passwords, Social Safety numbers, or financial institution info.
“You probably have any doubts about whether or not a communication you obtain from Princeton College is respectable, please confirm its legitimacy with a identified College individual earlier than clicking on any hyperlinks or downloading any attachment,” the officers added.
A spokesperson for Princeton College redirected us to the FAQ web page when requested in regards to the variety of people affected by the info breach and whether or not the attackers had made a ransom demand.
You probably have any info relating to this incident or some other undisclosed assaults, you may contact us confidentially through Sign at 646-961-3731 or at suggestions@bleepingcomputer.com.
UPenn knowledge breach
In early November, the College of Pennsylvania, one other personal Ivy League analysis college, confirmed that knowledge stolen in an October cyberattack had been exfiltrated from inner community methods associated to Penn’s growth and alumni actions.
As BleepingComputer first reported, the risk actors breached UPenn’s methods utilizing a stolen worker PennKey SSO account, which gave them entry to the college’s Salesforce occasion, SAP enterprise intelligence system, SharePoint recordsdata, and Qlik analytics platform.
They then stole 1.71 GB of inner paperwork from the college’s SharePoint and Field storage platforms, in addition to the Salesforce donor advertising and marketing database, which contained 1.2 million data.
Whereas the 2 incidents are comparable, Princeton officers stated over the weekend that they presently haven’t any “factual info indicating that this assault is linked or associated to some other incident.”
Replace November 17, 14:53 EST: Added Princeton assertion.


