University server breached, 163,000 social security numbers exposed

Personal information of 163,000 women has been compromised during a breach that targeted a server of the University of North Carolina’s School of Medicine.

The server in question contained information such as names, Social Security numbers, etc. belonging to women that took part of a mammography research project.

According to Computerworld, the first indication that something went wrong was back in July, when a researcher encountered some problems when trying to access the system. An investigation of the matter uncovered that not only has the server been hacked, but that there is a distinct possibility that it happened two years ago.

The system has, of course, been taken offline since the confirmation of the breach, but the University has only now began sending notifications to the women whose information has been compromised, because the forensic team needed time to discover the extent of the breach.