Malware places personal info of 25k at Massachusetts university at risk

A worm that struck a Salem State University server may have compromised the data of several thousand current and former employees.

How many victims? 25,000 employees.

What type of personal information? A spokesman for the Massachusetts school declined to give specifics on the data that could have been accessed by intruders, other than to say it was personal information

What happened? Last month, a server was infected with a worm, which may have made the information of anyone that received a paycheck from the school – from full-time staff to student employees – accessible to intruders.

What was the response? The 25,000 affected employees were notified by letter last week. Salem State also offered those individuals one year of identity theft protection services and set up a call center to answer the questions of the impacted.

Details: Tom Torello, a Salem State spokesman, told SCMagazine.com in a Monday email that the worm was identified as "Vobfus." According to security firm Trend Micro, worms in the Vobfus family function as "downloaders of other malware," which can be leveraged by attackers to remotely steal data on compromised machines.

Quote: “At this point we don't know if anyone's information has been used in any type of illegal way, so we don't know if anyone's information is out there,” Torello said.

Source: www.newburyportnews.com, The Daily News of Newburyport, “25,000 could be affected by data breach at SSU,” March 16, 2013.