University of Virginia Hacked in Suspected Chinese Espionage Case

The data breach allegedly targeted the email accounts of two employees whose work is connected to China. 

UVA disclosed the incident on Aug. 14 and shut down many of its IT systems at 5:00 p.m. that day for security upgrades

The school was tipped off by federal authorizes months ago and, on June 11, detected that “sophisticated attackers” from China had illegally accessed portions of UVA’s IT systems, school officials said.

The university waited two months to announce the breach to “best protect against future attacks” by being “confident that notification would not jeopardize … efforts to secure systems,” officials said.

“It is important that the hackers remain unaware of our action to investigate this event and protect against it,” officials added. “If the university had not taken this course of action, the situation could have worsened.”

There is no indication that personal information was accessed by the attackers. Nor is there evidence that sensitive research material was compromised. 

This weekend, the school is patching a flaw the hackers used to access the network.

The UVA Medical Center’s systems will not be affected during the upgrades, as their networks and servers were not targeted by the attackers, officials said.

Officials scheduled the security maintenance now, prior to the start of the fall semester, to “minimize disruptions” to the university’s day-to-day operations, they said.

Two years ago, UVA established an office in Shanghai and celebrated its grand opening in March 2015.