UCLA's Database Is Broken

The University of California, Los Angeles has a leak in its database. Identity theft problems occurred for UCLA's graduated and current students.

On Tuesday UCLA's administration e-mailed or letter all those students who are in its database, that in 2005 hackers have broken the University's database, and the personal information of the students may be used for hackers causes. The database contains records on 800.000 students.

Even the students who have graduated before 2005 became victims of identity theft. One of these students is Mari Nicholson, who is UCLA's 2003 graduate. When she was applying for a student loan, she found that someone has taken $24,500 from her credit card for a car loan and done some unknown purchases. The person used her old address where she used to live during the years she studied.

Nicholson spend lots of days looking through her papers and credit records, calling creditors, calling police. But all these efforts were useless, unless she received an e-mail form UCLA.

"I thought, like, 'Bingo!' " she said. "It may or may not be related, but it would sure solve a lot of the mystery of it."

Here is what a second-year student thinks. "I haven't heard of anybody who has had their Social Security number taken, but it's a pretty scary thing," said 18 years old Teo, who's name is also in the database. "The worst part is they found out just recently, and that's terrible. I mean, how could some of it be so open and how could the administration not see it?"

Tejinder Aulakh, computer science major, who will graduate this month, said. "I feel pretty bad about this whole incident. I wasn't expecting UCLA to be so careless about this information." He is also going to check his credit reports.

UCLA's administration has opened a website and established a toll-free hotline for inquires concerning this matter.

A spokesman said: by 5 p.m. the hotline - actually 25 call centers around the country - had received about 8,450 calls, many from people who had not received notification but had reason to believe they might be part of the affected group. By 2 p.m., the website had received 10,000 individual visitors.

This problem occurred because of the Social Security Numbers stored in the university's database. This is the most important information about each student, which makes students' credits open for hackers. So security specialists are thinking of replacing Social Security Numbers with other data, for example final four digits of their numbers or user IDs.

UCLA's administration advises to contact credit reporting agencies and freeze credit records.

By Ruzan Harutyunyan for HULIQ