Hackers warn University of Manchester students’ of imminent data leak | Hacker News Reader

Hackers warn University of Manchester students’ of imminent data leak

bleepingcomputer.com

Uni of Manchester alum here. Would be fun if they had personal data on former students as well, and by that I mean me. Can't wait to find out :)

I received an Alumni email from them on the 9th, warning of the incident. So they do...

Same here. Great memories of Kilburn Building - School of Computer Science.

Stopford Building!

Schuster!

Ex-EEE here. Sad to see that they've moved out of the beautiful Sackville Street Building for the rather architecturally uninspiring new Engineering building.

Always found it funny that the Sackville Street Building had a "J" floor, but no "I" floor...electrical engineers for you :^)

Alum here from the dept of Middle Eastern Studies, long before I ever thought about learning a programming language!

https://www.manchester.ac.uk/cyber-incident/

UoM believe that no financial or health care data has been accessed.

We will see!

Just your name, date of birth, phone number, email, current address, address history for the last 7 years, mothers maiden name, favourite pet, etc etc

That apostrophe! It's even in the source headline.

We need to alert the Apostrophe Protection Society [0]

[0]: https://www.apostrophe.org.uk/

The only unhackable data is open data

This is your daily reminder that There Is No Such Thing As Computer Security. If you have data on a networked computer, you should consider it semi-public. If someone else put your data into a networked computer, well, sorry about that.

See you tomorrow!

Security nihilism isn't the answer. Just because 100% security is a real hard target we shouldn't just all throw our arms in the air, do nothing, and be all snarky about it.

I never said we should do nothing! What we need to do is acknowledge the fact that networked computers are semi-public, and behave appropriately. Do you really need to put that information into a computer? Do you really need to give that information to someone who will put it into a computer? Do you really need to hook up your computer-based public infrastructure to the network? The cost/benefit evaluation changes when you remember that computer security doesn't exist.

Sadly yes, if I want to be paid then my employer needs my bank account details, it also needs things like name, address, ssn etc for various tax reasons. That information is then given to the lowest bidder to "keep safe". Inevitably it gets mislaid.

> Sadly yes, if I want to be paid then my employer needs my bank account details

I mean under current systems, yes, but it doesn't need to be that way.

There is no reason why banks can't offer a system where there's a unique ID for your account that can be used to pay you money but not withdraw that you can give employers or other people who want to pay you.

The whole routing/account number thing is just a vestigial holdover from checks.

We should work to reduce the value of that data.

Instead we don't. We just fine the victims.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-55334247

Why doesn't the government, who has quite a few times, significantly more than any other party in the world, collectively and individually, pay a fine?

I'd love for my money back, but it seems the relationship is only one way. Government makes a mistake? I pay for it. Government needs money? I pay for it. Government wants to spy on me? I pay for it, AND my data gets used against me, AND I also pay that fine.

Then somehow, I am the evil one for not supported taxes. Beats me too.

Hilarious isn't it?

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