Data breach hits 43,000 at Yale University
Another week, another data breach at a major university. This week it's Yale, which announced Friday that the names and Social Security numbers of 43,000 people affiliated with the university had been publicly viewable on Google for the past 10 months.
The breach occurred in September 2010, when Google's modified its search engine to make it capable of finding and indexing file transfer protocol (FTP) servers, the Yale Daily News reported. As a result, the data on the 43,000 people — all of whom were affiliated with the school in 1999 — became, essentially, public property for the next 10 months.
The exposed FTP server did not contain addresses, birth dates or any financial information, Yale's information technology services director Len Peters told the Yale Daily News. Peters added that there is no indication anyone has been exploited because of the breach.
