Breach, Data Security

We End Violence announces breach, California university impacted

California-based violence prevention education organization We End Violence discovered a potential intrusion into its Agent of Change website server that could have exposed personal information, and, so far, California State University students have been impacted.

How many victims? Altogether undisclosed, but about 79,000 California State University students in eight campuses may have been affected.

What type of personal information? Names, student ID numbers, email addresses provided from the school and provided by the user upon registering, Agent of Change usernames, Agent of Change passwords, gender identities, races, ethnicities, ages, relationship statuses, sexual identities and the name of the user's college or university.

What happened? We End Violence discovered a potential intrusion into its Agent of Change website server that could have exposed personal information.

What was the response? The Agent of Change website was taken down and We End Violence is working to restore it in a secure manner. Users are being required to change the passwords associated with their Agent of Change accounts, and are being warned to look out for phishing emails. All affected clients are being notified.

Details: We End Violence discovered the intrusion on Aug. 24 and took down the website on Aug. 26. The breach impacted eight California State University campuses and a total of about 79,000 students.

Quote: “While we do not have any evidence that the information related to the users of the Agent of Change website has been misused, We End Violence has notified all of our affected clients and the impacted Agent of Change users about this incident and the steps taken since discovering this incident,” a We End Violence statement emailed to SCMagazine.com on Wednesday said.

Source: A We End Violence statement emailed to SCMagazine.com on Wednesday; agentofchange.net, “September 4, 2015,” Sept. 4, 2015.

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