In the United States, Columbia University victim of a very political hacking.
Columbia University Hacked, Data Stolen
The Columbia University campus in New York, in 2024.
SETH WENIG / AP
Approximately 2.5 million application forms, spanning several decades, along with a significant amount of financial data, were stolen from Columbia University in New York during a cyberattack. The breach was discovered on June 26th when a photograph of Donald Trump appeared on numerous computers across the campus. An internal investigation concluded that the operation was "highly sophisticated and targeted" and explicitly aimed to steal the personal data of students for "political purposes."
This latter point is hardly in doubt: the hacker told Bloomberg that they specifically sought evidence that Columbia continued to apply affirmative action criteria in its recruitment processes – a practice heavily criticized by American Republicans and technically made illegal by the Supreme Court in 2023. Columbia University is a recurring target of the Trump administration, which has suspended $400 million in federal funds previously allocated to the university, claiming it did not do enough to protect its Jewish students during the large pro-Gaza demonstrations that took place on campus.
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The perpetrator(s) of the data theft apparently found no evidence of illegal recruitment practices by the university. However, in early July, several media outlets received documents from the hack, including the application form completed in 2009 by Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic Party’s nominee for the upcoming municipal election in November in New York.
Initially revealed by the New York Times, the document shows that Mr. Mamdani, born in Uganda to parents of Indian origin, described himself as both "Asian" and "African-American," despite not being Black. At the time of his application, the files of African-American students could benefit from affirmative action policies in place. Speaking to the New York Times, Mr. Mamdani denied seeking any particular advantage but claimed he sought to reflect the complexity of his origins in a basic checkbox system. He was not admitted to Columbia.
Some segments of the American left and press have sharply criticized the New York Times article, arguing that the newspaper gave too much importance to this case, and especially noting that the source of the documents should have led the newspaper to exercise greater caution. Mr. Mamdani’s admission file was provided to the newspaper by a far-right activist defending ultranatalist positions and the discredited theory of a link between intelligence and ethnicity. Identified by the Guardian as Jordan Lesker, he is better known online under the pseudonym "Crémieux," with whom Elon Musk has interacted on several occasions.
"Crémieux" has not detailed how he acquired the documents transmitted to the New York Times. Without invalidating the possibility of a hack carried out by an American hacker, it is worth noting that state-sponsored hackers have attempted, in the past, to "launder" documents stolen by intelligence services by transmitting them to an intermediary. In 2016, for example, the emails stolen by Russian services from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) were handed over to Wikileaks. The cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, which conducted the investigations into the DNC hack, is participating in the ongoing investigation into the Columbia hack.
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