Late breaking news from the University of Virginia arrived just as I joined radio host Coy Barefoot on WCHV-FM to discuss current affairs Friday afternoon’s edition of “Inside Charlottesville.” The plan was to talk about why “Warren G. Harding” was a trending topic on Twitter yesterday, but we got sidetracked by a big news story — announced, as one might expect, late on a Friday afternoon, the time when news goes to die.
A message to the University community from executive vice president and chief operating officer Patrick D. Hogan said:
The University of Virginia has confirmed that sophisticated attackers originating from China illegally accessed portions of the University’s information technology systems. Federal authorities had alerted the University of a possible cyber attack, and this was confirmed by the University on June 11. Upon becoming aware of the attack, the University engaged Mandiant, an internationally recognized cybersecurity firm, to immediately help the University identify the nature of the attack and take corrective action. This action included enhanced security measures to further fortify University data and systems.
While no personal data like Social Security numbers or credit card accounts was accessed by the hackers, it appears the breach was intended to find emails from specific individuals within the University whose work focuses on China.
According to a report by Daily Progress correspondent Dean Seal, published nearly simultaneously with Hogan’s University-wide announcement, “The attack specifically targeted the email accounts of two employees whose work is connected with China, university officials told The Daily Progress. However, the identities and departments of those employees have not been released. They remain employed at the university, officials said Friday.”
Although it was not clear that the cyberattack had originated from the Chinese government, Coy and I speculated over the air that the targeted employees may be faculty members or researchers who work on democracy issues or human rights in China, or perhaps are involved in some business activities. The Chinese hackers may have been seeking information about Chinese citizens with whom the UVA employees interact or correspond. Human rights activists seem like natural targets of interest for Red Chinese intelligence services.
Chinese hackers have previously invaded U.S. businesses’ computer systems in order to uncover trade secrets. They also recently harvested information from a decades-old database of U.S. government employees maintained by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).
The cyberattack did not target the UVA hospital or health system. Those divisions’ email, web sites, and databases remain operational.
University officials estimate that it will take approximately 48 hours to install the security fixes needed to protect the emails of faculty, staff, and students. They recommend that, once the system is running again, individuals should change their email and other passwords for additional protection.
Although Coy and I ended up talking about a topic other than what was planned, we were still able to connect the late-breaking news to politics — namely, Hillary Clinton’s questionable email practices and her personal server, which was turned over to the FBI but found to be “wiped clean” (as one audience caller pointed out) and how HRC’s problems have led to musings about the inventor of the Internet, Al Gore, joining the contest for the Democratic Party’s 2016 presidential nomination, along with Vice President Joe Biden waiting in the wings for Hillary to stumble.
Clinton’s current rivals are not up to the task, I said: “Bernie Sanders can win the nomination but not the general election. Jim Webb can win the general election but not the nomination.” Democrats, I added, don’t have the kind of deep bench of potential presidential candidates that Republicans have, and the party is suffering for it today.
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