The Harvard Crimson has reported that an undergraduate student was dismissed from Harvard College after allegedly hacking into the online accounts of faculty members.
The report is that The Faculty Council voted to dismiss the student, whose name has not been released, on May 5th and that according to Secretary of the Administrative Board John “Jay” L. Ellison, used confidential information to gain unauthorized access to the Registrar’s Office’s online grading system.
The student, according to the report, obtained Harvard University IDs and personal identification numbers of his instructors via a website that he setup.
The credentials were likely obtained via “spear phishing,” a targeted phishing attempt against a specific individual or group, in which the student was able to capture the faculty login information.
