University’s servers hacked; no data was lost

STARKVILLE — Mississippi State University was a victim of a cyber-attack to its servers, but no data was lost, the university said.

Sid Salter, MSU director of university relations, said in a statement: “Mississippi State University was the target of a cyber-attack on one of the university’s servers, but a preliminary investigation indicates that no secure data was lost in the incident.

“At approximately 8 a.m. Wednesday (Jan. 9), the website Hack Read News posted that information related to 535 Mississippi State University individuals had been compromised by a hacker. A Brazilian hacker claimed credit for the incident.

“MSU President Mark Keenum was advised of the incident and directed MSU’s chief information officer to launch an investigation into the claim and make a subsequent impact assessment.

“MSU chief information officer Mike Rackley said that a preliminary university investigation revealed that no data of a secure nature — Social Security numbers, credit card information, health information or grades — was compromised. Rackley said most of the information obtained by the hacker is available from existing public domain print or digital university directories.”