The recent cyberattack at Columbia University affected close to 870,000 students, applicants and employees, compromising their Social Security numbers, health information and other sensitive data, according to school officials.
In late June, Columbia students were locked out of their school emails and other platforms as part of a technical outage involving user authentication services. The university launched an investigation and determined that hackers obtained information “related to admissions, enrollment and financial aid processes,” which also included applicant demographic data and academic records.
“Though our investigation is still underway, we have learned more about the nature of the incident and the data involved,” college officials said in a statement.
It does not appear that any patient records at the Columbia University Irving Medical Center were breached.
The attack’s scope, first reported by Bloomberg News on Friday, was disclosed in Columbia’s data breach notifications submitted this week to state governments. The university started notifying impacted individuals on Thursday and offering two years of credit monitoring.
“We remain committed to continuously improving our defenses,” the school officials added.
Columbia’s statement did not include a motive for the attack. However, a person claiming to be the hacker previously told Bloomberg their goal was to expose race-based admissions practices at Columbia after the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in 2023. The university says it complies with the law.
Some of the breached data was shared with The New York Times, showing Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani identified as Asian and “Black or African American” on his application to Columbia, which was denied. Mamdani, who is of South Asian descent, was born in Uganda and attended Bowdoin, a small liberal arts college in Maine.
Weeks after the data breach, Columbia agreed to share admissions data broken down by race, grades and test scores with President Trump, as part of a sweeping settlement in the name of fighting antisemitism, but also inclusive of other administration priorities.
On August 7, the government broadened that directive regarding applicants to all U.S. colleges that receive federal funding.
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