Ohio University leaves 'backdoor' open for a year

An unprecedented string of electronic intrusions has prompted Ohio University to place at least one technician on paid administrative leave and begin a sweeping reorganisation of the university's computer services department.

Bill Sams, Ohio University's chief information officer, said he initiated the reorganisation on Friday. The university is reacting to recent discoveries that data thieves compromised at least three campus computer servers.

In a disclosure that hasn't been widely reported, one of the compromised servers, which held Social Security numbers belonging to 137,000 people, was penetrated by US and overseas-based hackers for at least a year and possibly much longer, Sams said in a phone interview with silicon.com sister site CNET News.com.

At least one security expert was astonished that a breach could go undetected for so long.

Avivah Litan, security analyst with research company Gartner, said: "That's unbelievable. I have never heard of that much of a delay. Why would it take a year to discover this? It doesn't make any sense."

What's also alarming to Litan is that a year-long security breach could go undetected at a time when universities should be operating on high alert. Over the past year, numerous media reports have chronicled breaches at such schools as Notre Dame, Purdue and Georgetown universities.

Ohio University only became aware that a problem existed after the FBI discovered someone had remotely taken control of one of the school's servers.

Litan estimates that a third of all data leaks are at universities. She said information bandits are preying on the nation's colleges for three reasons. First, the schools possess Social Security numbers and other information useful in committing identity theft. Secondly, she said universities don't take security serious enough.

Litan lamented: "They don't want to spend money on it."

Lastly, universities are at a disadvantage because they must keep information free flowing. Part of their mission is to share knowledge. While the internet has simplified that task, it has also presented greater risks.

At the time of the attacks at Ohio University, the school operated 90 servers, Sams said. And that was just the primary computer network; more servers are operated by individual university departments.

Sams said: "If you're a corporation, you can just lock everything down. We don't have that luxury. The academic side is trying to find a line between maximum flexibility and data security... we need someone somewhere to come up with a set of best practices for schools."

How a server could be left open to intruders is still under investigation. This much is known: a server supporting the Alumni Relations department was supposed to be offline, Sams said. The people responsible for shutting it down thought they had. The server continued to be connected to the internet but didn't receive security updates. It was the equivalent of leaving a backdoor open for thieves to walk in and seize what they wanted.

The culprits who broke into the other two servers made off with health records belonging to students treated at the university's health centre, as well as Social Security numbers of an additional 60,000 people.

Sams said: "We had a failure of both policies and procedures." Asked why, when so many academic institutions are succumbing to computer attacks, Ohio University wasn't quicker to order a security audit, Sams replied: "Should we have? Yes. Did we? No."

Greg Sandoval writes for CNET News.com