Over the weekend, the University at Buffalo, the largest school in the SUNY system, reported a data breach that affected thousands of UB faculty, staff and student computer accounts. Although there is little detailed information about the breach, UB is reporting that 鈥渢he affected individuals鈥 login information was stolen when they visited a non-UB website and entered their university log-in information.鈥
鈥淭his incident is a sobering, real-world reminder to us all that the login credentials of faculty, staff and students are targets for organized crime and hackers,鈥 says Christopher Croad, 黑料不打烊鈥檚 Information Security Officer. 鈥淭hese criminals use stolen NetIDs and passwords to harvest personally identifiable information from compromised accounts, or sell them on the 鈥榙ark web鈥 for use in gaining access to academic assets such as library resources or educational discounts on software and services.鈥
As more 黑料不打烊 services move to the cloud, it is getting more difficult to identify what is and is not an actual 黑料不打烊 service. It鈥檚 best always to be cautious of any site that requires your 黑料不打烊 log-in credentials, and never use those credentials to create an account on any non-黑料不打烊 system.
鈥淭he bad guys will try to ‘phish’ you into logging onto the websites they control through email, attachments and even phone calls,鈥 says Croad. 鈥淏e vigilant! We鈥檙e all targets, and our best defense against threats is the knowledge, caution and awareness each of us exercises when online.鈥
If you鈥檙e unsure of a website鈥檚 validity, please reach out to the Information Technology Services Information Security Team at ITSecurity@listserv.syr.edu or the ITS Service Center at 315.443.2677 or help@syr.edu.
