Mercer University hack incident endangers personal information of local students, parents

MACON, Ga. – Mercer University parents and students received a letter on May 29 informing them that personal information was accessed due to a ransomware hack.

The hack happened on May 11 but people are now finding out about the incident due to the letter sent to the people involved.

The letter states, “Upon identifying the incident, we immediately secured the systems involved, alerted law enforcement, and launched an investigation. Through the investigation that we began when we learned of the intrusion, we determined an unauthorized actor accessed certain files stored on Mercer’s computer servers. These files included at least one record that contained your name, in combination with your Social Security number and/or driver’s license number.”

According to Mercer’s student-run newspaper, “The Mercer Cluster” a ransomware group called “Akira” was responsible for the attack. The group posted a tweet on Twitter stating that the university does not care about their students’ personal information, and it will be available in “their blog soon.” The group also said that Mercer denied paying the “affordable” ransom.

Dynasty Ramirez, a Marketing student at Mercer who lives in Warner Robins, admits she hasn’t received a letter yet and was unaware of the hack.

Middle Georgia State University’s Chief Information Security Officer Joel Morgan said ransomware is software that locks computers and encrypts files on the computer. Groups like Akira make the victim pay a certain amount of money, usually Bitcoin, to be able to access their files. Morgan said that universities are usually targeted by these groups because of scam emails and the people who respond to them, therefore becoming targets.

“Universities are typically less protected than commercial sites because they have fewer personnel, especially public universities, but Mercer is a private university I don’t know what kind of funding they have for cybersecurity,” said Morgan.

Students should be careful when these types of attacks happen and make steps to protect their information. Morgan said that students and individuals should enable multifactor authentication when available, use a different password for each account or site they are using, turn on a firewall to block dangerous websites, keep devices updated with operating system and application security updates and always keep a backup for all important files in the computer in case they are involved in a hack.

He said there are many things universities can do to prevent these attacks from happening including, again, enabling Multifactor Authentication on systems — especially email and financial websites — and scan and quarantine files containing phishing and malware. He suggested institutions start offering phish testing to employees and students. He also advised that universities require system administrators to use separate accounts for system administration and daily uses and to use a firewall, although this may require a subscription.

The Journal reached out to Mercer to find out more information about the incident, but they denied offering further comment beyond what’s in their statement. The statement can be read at den.mercer.edu/mercer-university-statement-on-data-incident/.

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