Hackers Attack Harvard, Gamers

As many as 10,000 Harvard graduate students last night found out their personal information was compromised courtesy of a February computer intrusion.The incident affects grads in Harvard's Arts and Sciences school. According to a posting that appears on the university's Web site, "a Web server that contained summaries of GSAS applicant data for entry to the Fall 2007 academic year, summaries of GSAS housing applicant data for the 2007-08 and 2006-07 academic years, and administrator information was hacked by an outsider and compromised in a way that the data on the server could have been viewed or copied."

Harvard is still investigating how the breach occurred and is offering a year's worth of free credit monitoring services to the 6,600 students whose social security numbers were compromised.

Separately, but also in the security department, hackers looking to steal passwords used in popular online games have infected more than 10,000 Web pages in recent days. McAfee researchers suspect some form of automation is involved and liken the attack to what happened to the Miami Dolphins and Dolphins Stadium Web sites just prior to last year's Super Bowl.Computerworld