Hackers threaten to leak data after breaching University of Pennsylvania to send mass emails

On Friday morning, University of Pennsylvania alumni, students, staff, and community affiliates received several emails from hackers purporting to represent the university’s Graduate School of Education (GSE).

“We have terrible security practices and are completely unmeritocratic,” read the email. “We love breaking federal rules like FERPA (all your data will be leaked).”

This message was sent from a variety of different Penn-affiliated email accounts, such as the GSE, as well as purporting to come from several senior members of staff across the university.

Other Penn affiliates have received the email multiple times from different senders with official @upenn.edu email addresses. (Disclosure: As an alumna and former employee of the university, I have received the message three times thus far to my personal email.)

Penn spokesperson Ron Ozio told TechCrunch in an email on Friday that the school’s incident response team is “actively addressing” the situation.

“A fraudulent email has been circulated that appears to come from the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education. This is obviously a fake, and nothing in the highly offensive, hurtful message reflects the mission or actions of Penn or of Penn GSE,” said the spokesperson.

As the hackers plainly stated in their message (“Please stop giving us money”), this breach appears motivated to suppress alumni donations. The breach also comes soon after the university publicly rebuffed the White House’s offer to make commitments aligned with the Trump administration’s political agenda in exchange for federal funding. Penn and six other schools have rejected the White House’s proposal.

The White House’s “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” asks universities to abolish affirmative action in hiring and admissions, and to discipline departments that “purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas.”

Compact signatories would also be required to freeze tuition for five years, offer tuition-free education to students pursuing “hard sciences,” cap international undergrad enrollment at 15%, and require standardized tests like the SAT for admission.

The compact also mandates that schools enforce policies that marginalize transgender and gender non-conforming students.

“[The compact] preferences and mandates protections for the communication of conservative thought alone,” wrote Penn President J. Larry Jameson in his response to Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, which was published on the university’s website.

“One-sided conditions conflict with the viewpoint diversity and freedom of expression that are central to how universities contribute to democracy and to society,” wrote Jameson.