Columbia University Attacked By Hacktivist

A hacker breached Columbia University’s IT systems and stole sensitive data belonging to more than two million students, employees, and applicants. The malicious actor caused a widespread shutdown of the university’s computer systems on June 24. Columbia officials stated on Tuesday that they suspect the attacker was a “hacktivist,” as the incident appeared to have a political agenda.

According to the New York Times, during the outage, the university’s computer screens and public monitors displayed a smiling face of President Donald Trump. Columbia officials did not specify a motive for the attack. However, the apparent hacker reached out to Bloomberg News, claiming the breach was intended to verify whether Columbia was using affirmative action in its admission policies, a practice banned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2023.

The alleged hacker, who did not disclose their name, shared 1.6 gigabytes of data from 2.5 million students with Bloomberg News. The stolen information included decades of records, such as students' university ID numbers, citizenship status, the academic program they applied to, and more. The hacktivist claimed the data shared was only a portion, and that during 2 months, they extracted 460 gigabytes of data.

Columbia University shared an official statement on July 1, confirming the cyberattack and assuring that the breach was contained on June 24. Operations have since been restored.

“We now have initial indications that the unauthorized actor also unlawfully stole data from a limited portion of our network,” states the document. “We are investigating the scope of the apparent theft and will share our findings with the University community as well as anyone whose personal information was compromised.”

A recent report by Check Point Research revealed that the education sector has been experiencing a significant increase in cyberattacks, setting an average of 3,323 weekly cyberattacks to educational institutions in the U.S. by April 2025.

In January, a PowerSchool data breach exposed all historical records of students and teachers. Last year, Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center suffered a major data breach, compromising sensitive information from 1.4 million patients.