HUGE warning guys, there are two duke emails floating about,
"On Nov. 29, 2007, technical administrators at Duke Law School discovered that our website was compromised by electronic intruders. As soon as we learned of the breach, we took our site offline and launched a full security evaluation. During that investigation, we discovered that some personal information you provided for the purpose of tracking your application status could have been accessed by the intruders. That information includes home addresses, phone numbers, email addresses and the passwords you created to access your application status information.
While a separate database containing some Social Security numbers also was compromised during the attack, the application status tracker does not contain Social Security numbers and your Social Security number was never at risk. In your case, we are primarily concerned about the security of your password as it is linked to your email address.
We have no evidence that the intruders actually downloaded or acquired any of this information. Nonetheless, we know the intruders had the opportunity and the tools to do so.
If you use the same password for Duke Law that you use on other websites or online accounts, we recommend that you change those passwords. You may also consider monitoring your credit and placing a 90-day fraud alert on your credit report, both of which you can do for free through any of the three major credit bureaus. See
www.annualcreditreport.com or
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/alerts/infocompalrt.shtm for more information and instructions.
To further protect you, we are restructuring our application status page. Within the next week, we will email you instructions for accessing the new system. In the meantime, if you would like information about the status of your application, please email
admissions@law.duke.edu.
The security and safety of our community is of utmost importance to us, and Duke University works hard to protect the personal information of prospective students and other community members. We are taking all possible steps to address this breach and prevent it from happening again. We have notified law enforcement agencies and will notify any relevant government agencies about Duke’s response. The intrusion was confined to our web server; data stored in other systems at the Law School and around campus were not compromised.
We regret that this situation occurred, and we apologize for any inconvenience to you. Please do not hesitate to contact me or Mark Hill, Director of Admissions, by calling (919) 613-7259 or emailing
webdata@law.duke.edu if you have any questions or concerns.
Sincerely,
William J. Hoye
Associate Dean
Admissions and Financial Aid"