Hackers broke into a University of Texas database and stole the names, Social Security numbers and e-mail addresses of more than 55,000 students, former students and employees, officials said. A preliminary evaluation by authorities did not find evidence that material from the database had been disseminated or used to illegally obtain credit cards or withdraw money from bank accounts, said Deputy U.S. Attorney Robert Pitman. SCHOOL OFFICIALS said they were notifying the victims. Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle said search warrants related to the case were served late Wednesday in Austin and Houston. There were no arrests as of Thursday afternoon, officials said. The theft was discovered Sunday when employees found a computer malfunction, according to Dan Updegrove, the university’s vice president for information technology, who described the incident on the school’s Web site. The database was hacked by a computer in Austin several times beginning on Feb. 26 and ending Sunday. Updegrove said the hackers used a program to query the database with 3 million potential Social Security numbers, resulting in about 55,200 successful matches. Full Story
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