UTEP students have a governing body known as the Student Government Association or SGA. But in a press conference Tuesday afternoon, administrators said a controversy over the last election prompted a group of students to prove the results might have been rigged. Officials said the group of eight to twelve students allegedly accessed thousands of student and faculty Social Security numbers by hacking into an old computer system.
"If you had a UTEP e-mail address, you could access the file and they discovered the route to those files and were able to get into those," said Richard Aduato, university spokesman.
Adauto said the university's files were old and the people whose information was gained had used their Social Security number to vote in either the 2002 SGA election or the faculty election. When the breach was revealed last week, Adauto said it locked down that system.
"They were not trying to, as far as we can tell, do anything illegal with these numbers," he said.
But some UTEP students aren't feeling as confident.
"We trust them with our Social Security number, you would think they'd be able to take care of it," said UTEP senior Rachel Sendek.
UTEP officials say 4,467 current and former students, as well as 252 current and former employees were affected. They will receive notice of the breach by mail this week. A university investigation is not yet over.
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