International students concerned about hacker

Wednesday, March 30, 2005 | 9:37 a.m.

More than a week after a computer hacker possibly accessed their personal data, UNLV international students said they want to know more about what information the hacker was actually able to download and how that information might be used.

Coming back for classes Monday after Spring Break, several international students said they were concerned about identity theft and or having problems with their travel after a hacker breached the university's Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) server. Most students also said they were unclear about what they needed to do to protect themselves.

"We don't know how serious this problem is, so we can't act on it," said Jeongja Won, a South Korean student studying at the Harrah College of Hotel Administration.

Won said she was afraid that someone could use her identify to either open up false accounts or travel internationally under her name, possibly affecting her student visa status. A letter from the university warned her and other students of both possibilities.

The letters, sent March 21, apologized to students for the breach, directed them to a Federal Trade Commission Web site on identity theft and instructed them to contact the Office of International Students and Scholars with further questions.

Mills said she and other university officials wrestled with wanting to "Give them (students) enough information to protect themselves but not scare them or cause mass panic."

Mills said that a student's visa status should not be affected.

The office has received about 35 e-mails and about two dozen phone calls from international students since the university announced the breach March 18, right before Spring Break began, UNLV spokesman Joe Cockrell said. No student has reported any problems with identity theft or with their ability to travel, and most students are asking what they need to do to protect themselves.

The office did not formally log the number of calls they were receiving, Cockrell said.

The federally mandated SEVIS database at UNLV contained student visa data and contact information for about 5,000 students, Mills said. The database allows the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement office to track foreign students and scholars.

UNLV computer specialists caught the hacker in the act during a routine security inspection, but he or she managed to download some information before the server was shut down, computer security officials said. There's a chance the hacker may have been trying to hide another program on the university's server.

The university has no way of knowing exactly how the hacker may use the student data, or what data the hacker was able to download, Mills said. Officials there are still waiting for more information from the FBI's investigation of the incident.

"Until we have additional information there isn't anything else we can tell them," Mills said.

One thing students can do to protect their finances is to call the national credit bureaus and flag their credit reports so an account cannot be opened in their name unless the student is called first for confirmation, Mills said.

There is a chance that students' names may be flagged by the FBI to prevent others from traveling under their name, Mills said, and those students will be asked additional security questions when traveling.

Mills said the university is encouraging students to bring multiple forms of identification and to take the letter from UNLV explaining the security breach with them as a precaution.

David Schrom, spokesman for the Las Vegas office of the FBI, said the FBI was still investigating and that he could not provide further details.

At least one international student, Miho Kim of Japan, said she was unaware of the breach on Monday and several others said they, like Won, were waiting to see the extent of the hack.

If their identities are stolen, that would "be really, really bad," math majors Priya Savavanan of India and Ellen Lee of South Korea both said.

Savavanan said she was confident the international student services office would help them if any problems occurred, and Lee said any hacker would be "stupid" to steal her identity for financial gain.

"I have no money and no credit," Lee said.