Identity Theft News

Cal Berkeley health data breach affects 160,000

Monday, May 11, 2009

The University of California-Berkeley on Friday acknowledged that hackers breached a database of the university's health system records, including 160,000 names and Social Security numbers.

UC Berkeley said it was notifying the people affected about possible identity theft or fraud, but the initial data theft may have occurred months before the university's IT security administrators caught on.

The server breach began on October 9, 2008 and continued until April 9, 2009, when campus network security administrators found messages left by the hackers, according to the university's website.

The databases breached by hackers contained health insurance information and "non-treatment medical information," such as immunization records and names of physicians patients may have seen, the university said.

Investigators believe the attack was launched by hackers based overseas - who accessed a public website and bypassed security to access databases stored on the same server.

The victims of the cybertheft are current and former UC Berkeley students, as well as their parents and spouses who had UHS health care coverage dating back to 1999; and some Mills College former and current students back to 2001.

"UC Berkeley administrators pointed out that the hackers fortunately did not access University Health Services's (UHS) medical records, which include patients' diagnoses, treatments and therapies," wrote Janet Gilmore, a university media relations spokesperson.