Columbia Cyberattack Appears Politically Motivated, University Says

New York|Columbia Cyberattack Appears Politically Motivated, University Says

The cyberattack that caused a widespread shutdown of Columbia University’s computer systems last week appears to be the work of a “hacktivist” — a hacker who also stole student data with the apparent goal of furthering a political agenda, a Columbia official said on Tuesday.

During the outage, which began on June 24, a smiling image of President Trump appeared on some computer screens at the university, including on public monitors in the student center. The Columbia official, who was not authorized to speak publicly, did not provide a motivation for the attack.

But Bloomberg News, which received messages from the apparent hacker, said that the person described stealing student data in order to see if Columbia was using affirmative action in its admission policies, a practice the Supreme Court effectively barred in 2023.

A cyber-forensics firm hired by the university reported that the hack appeared to be highly sophisticated and targeted in its theft of documents, the official said. The official added that Columbia had not yet determined the scope of the data theft and that it could take weeks to months to do so. Columbia’s websites and internal systems, however, which went down during the attack, were up and running again within a week.

The person who communicated with Bloomberg News provided it with 1.6 gigabytes of data representing 2.5 million student applications to Columbia dating back decades. The data included students’ and applicants’ university-issued identification numbers, their citizenship status, the decisions made on their applications and the academic programs to which they applied, among other information.

Bloomberg reported that it was able to confirm the accuracy of the data for eight Columbia students and alumni who applied to the university between 2019 and 2024.