The University of Pennsylvania confirmed Friday that hackers breached multiple official email accounts, sending mass messages threatening to leak student and alumni data while demanding donations stop. The attack targeted the Graduate School of Education's systems and multiple senior staff accounts, with recipients getting the same threatening message from different @upenn.edu addresses throughout the morning.
The University of Pennsylvania is scrambling to contain a significant email breach that sent shockwaves through its alumni network Friday morning. Hackers compromised multiple official university email accounts, including the Graduate School of Education and senior staff addresses, to blast out threatening messages warning that student data would be leaked.
"We have terrible security practices and are completely unmeritocratic," read the fraudulent emails sent from legitimate @upenn.edu addresses. "We love breaking federal rules like FERPA (all your data will be leaked)." The message reached thousands of alumni, students, and staff members, with many receiving multiple copies from different compromised accounts throughout the morning.
Penn spokesperson Ron Ozio told TechCrunch that the university's incident response team is "actively addressing" the situation. "This is obviously a fake, and nothing in the highly offensive, hurtful message reflects the mission or actions of Penn or of Penn GSE," Ozio said in a statement Friday afternoon.
The hackers made their motivation clear with a direct plea embedded in their message: "Please stop giving us money." This suggests the breach was specifically designed to disrupt alumni fundraising efforts during what's typically a crucial donation period for universities. The timing appears calculated to maximize damage to Penn's development operations.
The attack comes just weeks after Penn publicly rejected the White House's controversial "Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education." The university was among seven schools that refused to sign the Trump administration's agreement, which would have required abolishing affirmative action, freezing tuition, and implementing policies that marginalize transgender students.
Penn President J. Larry Jameson wrote a scathing response to Education Secretary Linda McMahon, arguing the compact "preferences and mandates protections for the communication of conservative thought alone." He added that "one-sided conditions conflict with the viewpoint diversity and freedom of expression that are central to how universities contribute to democracy."
