The cybercriminals have already engaged in identity theft

Oct 12, 2012 13:51 GMT  ·  By

Sometime between October 1 and October 5, 2012, representatives of the Northwest Florida State College (NWFSC) noticed that the institution’s computer systems had been breached. As a result of the incident, the personal details of around 280,000 students and employees have been exposed.

According to Dr. Ty Handy, the college’s president, the breach took place between May 21 and September 24, 2012.

Handy revealed that the hackers managed to access one of the folders on the organization’s main server. Information such as names, social security numbers, dates of birth, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, and Direct Deposit Account numbers has been spread out in various files stored on the affected machine.

The large quantity of data and the fact that the breach was discovered so late have allowed the attackers to engage in identity theft.

“Some employees had the bank account where they receive direct deposit of their pay checks accessed and funds removed, a few others have had fraudulent credit card charges or accounts set up in their names,” Handy said.

“We speculate that this was a professional, coordinated attack by one or more hackers. We believe that the hackers are having to do specific work to pull together enough information about an individual employee to steal their identity,” he added.

The latest count revealed that around 76,000 NWFSC current and former students had their personal information stolen. However, the incident also exposed the personal details of approximately 200,000 State of Florida students eligible for Bright Futures scholarships.

Current, past and retired NWFSC employees are also affected, the personal and financial details of 3,000 of them being stolen by the cybercriminals.

“We want to be sure that we fully understand the situation and provide accurate information to those impacted,” said Florida College System Chancellor Randy Hanna. “While some of the contact information is dated, we will be trying to reach every student whose records may have been captured.”