On Thursday morning, bleary eyed and still half asleep, I woke to about a page of frantic text messages, from friends, parents, and just about everybody else I knew.
The UCF computer system had somehow been attacked, and 63,000 current, former students and faculty had their social security numbers hacked. Now, this hack occurred in early January, and it’s only now that UCF has decided to inform the student body that, hey, someone has your very personal, and very private, information. I understand that they’re saying that they were trying to see the details of what occurred, but I just don’t see why, during that time, they could not inform students that something had happened. It just seems a bit odd.
To add insult to injury, the “hotline” given out to see if your information was stolen has had wait times reported up to 40 minutes. You call, the machine generated voice states that it will only be one minute until you can speak with someone, and nearly an hour later you’re able to get through… Just in time for some people to be told to call back tomorrow, or the next day even, because they’re currently swamped.
As a student, I have every right to be upset. As a former UCF employee, I have every right to be terrified. Most of the information stolen was not from students themselves, but from those who worked for UCF at one point in time, going so far back as the 1980’s. A small portion is student athletes, but for the most part, it is the people who depended on their place of work to have safe enough firewalls to prevent something like this from ever occurring.
You know, in a school full of engineers who will one day be able to, hopefully, send people to Mars, you’d think we’d have a better security system in place. Also, who wants to steal the information of college students? Seriously? What do you think you’re going to do with my number? Notoriously, college students usually don’t have a lot of money, mostly because whatever they get is spent towards books that are $200 that you will only use once, for that one paragraph, and a tuition that could feed a small nation. So, if stealing my information includes paying my student debt, I am liking this plan already.
This is a serious crime too, stealing 63,000 peoples' information. The FBI is involved. The UCF Police Department is involved. My parents, thanks to a very kind article from the Orlando Sentinel that went viral, are now involved. Yet, I’m still trying to figure out why you would need more than like, five people’s personal information. I’m not tech savy at all, but it sounds like this occurred over a significant time frame, probably by one person who found a loophole and then helped others exploit it to the point where there’s thousands of social security numbers out there in the hands of people who should not have them.
All I hope is that this will be resolved soon, and that my information is not taken along with it. And if it was…hackers beware. For I shall become Liam Neeson to make sure that you don’t ruin my good name.
