Members of the University of Pennsylvania community were surprised this week after receiving shocking emails with the subject line “We got hacked.”
The messages appeared to come from addresses linked to the university’s Graduate School of Education. The sender, who claimed to be the hacker or hackers, used the emails to insult the school and make serious accusations.
The message described the University of Pennsylvania as an elitist institution with poor security and offensive language aimed at students and staff. It accused the university of hiring and admitting people based on connections, donations, or race rather than merit. The emails also claimed that the school violated the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, a federal law that protects students’ private information. The hackers warned that they might leak the university’s data.
They also mentioned Students for Fair Admissions, the group behind the Supreme Court case that ended race-based affirmative action in college admissions. This suggests the attack could be politically motivated.
A Verge journalist, who is also a Penn graduate, confirmed receiving the same email. Penn later addressed the situation in a statement on its website. The university said a fake email was circulating from what looked like a Penn GSE account with the subject “We got hacked (Action Required)” or something similar. Officials from Penn’s Office of Information Security said they were aware of the issue and that the Incident Response team was working to fix it.
In another statement, the university described the email as offensive and hurtful, emphasizing that it did not represent Penn or its Graduate School of Education in any way.
The University of Pennsylvania is not the only Ivy League school targeted by hackers this year. Earlier, Columbia University suffered a data breach that reportedly exposed decades of admissions information. The person claiming responsibility said they wanted to find out whether Columbia continued affirmative action practices after the Supreme Court ruling. The same hacker, who has described himself as racist and pro-Hitler, also claimed to have attacked New York University and the University of Minnesota.
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Both Penn and Columbia have recently been at the center of political debates over their handling of campus protests related to the war in Gaza, adding more controversy to an already tense atmosphere. The full extent of the University of Pennsylvania breach remains unclear, but the investigation is ongoing.
