Hackers threaten to leak ‘woke’ University of Pennsylvania student data

“We have been hacked,” said members of the University of Pennsylvania community in the subject lines of several emails sent from addresses linked to its Graduate School of Education. Apparently the sender was the potential hacker or the hackers themselves.

“The University of Pennsylvania is an elitist institution full of woke morons,” say the emails, which were received by several alumni, including one Edge author who attended the University of Pennsylvania. “We have terrible security practices and are completely unmeritocratic. We hire and admit morons because we love legacies, donors, and unqualified affirmative action admissions. We love breaking federal laws like FERPA (all your data will be disclosed) and Supreme Court decisions like SFFA. Please stop giving us money.”

The apparent hacker(s) referenced the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, which protects the privacy of students’ personal information shared with schools. SFFA appears to refer to Students for Fair Admissions, the group that was at the forefront of the Supreme Court decision that struck down race-based affirmative action for college admissions.

Penn acknowledged the existence of the messages in a statement posted on its website. “A fraudulent email is currently circulating that appears to come from a Penn GSE account with the subject line ‘We have been hacked (Action Required)’ or similar,” it says. “The University’s Office of Information Security is aware of the situation and its incident response team is actively responding. » In a statement posted on the university’s communications website, the school said that “nothing in the highly offensive and hurtful message reflects the mission or actions of Penn or Penn GSE.”