The Columbia Hack: A Wildcat Attempt at Enforcing a Right-Wing Ideological Project

Columbia University experienced an hours-long system-wide outage on June 24th, with its internal email service going down, students unable to log in to platforms used by professors, library catalogs offline, and Zoom unavailable. Every single service that required Columbia's official authentication service was affected, but the most eerie aspect of the breach was the appearance of images of President Donald Trump on some screens across campus.

During this time, the personal data of at least every person who applied to Columbia between 2019 and 2024 was stolen. It's not yet clear the full scope of the breach, according to Columbia, but someone claiming to be the hacker began shopping the data around, giving 1.6 gigabytes of admissions records "dating back decades" to Bloomberg. The self-identified hacker said they had stolen 460 gigabytes, including 1.8 million Social Security numbers, financial aid package information, and employee pay stubs – the result of two months burrowing into Columbia's servers before finally gaining the highest level of access.

Bloomberg confirmed details of the Columbia data it received with eight current and former students, who reported that the records were accurate. The hacker claimed to have stolen the data due to their interest in knowing whether Columbia had continued to engage in "affirmative action," admissions policies meant to improve opportunities for groups that colleges had once discriminated against.

The hack appears to be politically motivated: the purported hacker told Bloomberg as much, saying they stole the data because they wanted to know whether Columbia had continued to engage in affirmative action after the practice was barred in 2023 by the Supreme Court. The Republican war on affirmative action is part of a broader push to undermine the Civil Rights Act, which is barely disguised as attacks on "wokeness" and "DEI."

The timing of the hack, given Columbia University's relationship with the Trump regime, raised eyebrows. A hacker who is also a Trump follower might attempt to pressure Columbia with stolen data, perhaps via strategic leaks to major newspapers, in order to get it to capitulate to Trump's pressure campaigns.

A Lack of Coverage: Why The Verge and Other Institutions Failed to Report on the Hack

On June 24th, when the Columbia hack occurred, there has been precious little reporting on the subject. Wired hasn't covered it, and until this story, neither has The Verge. Nor have The Chronicle of Higher Education, CyberScoop, 404 Media, TechCrunch, or Krebs on Security.

The Wall Street Journal passed on the story, Reuters reported a brief on the initial outage, and AP ran a short write-up as part of their syndication deal with The Washington Post. However, the most extensive reporting comes from Bloomberg and The New York Times.

A Flaw in The New York Times' Coverage: Using Hacked Data to Smear a Mayoral Candidate

The New York Times has elected to cover the hack in a way that is less informative than Bloomberg. For those of us keeping score at home, this includes two stories about the hack and its overall political implications, one story using hacked data to smear a mayoral candidate, and two stories that appear to be sensationalized.

The Times' coverage also raises questions about journalistic ethics. Reporters received tips from people with biases and bad motives all the time, but The Times only published such information after they had independently verified it and judged it to be newsworthy. This is particularly concerning when dealing with politically motivated hacks of higher education, like this one.

The Columbia University hack figures as a wildcat attempt at enforcing the right-wing ideological project of bringing back open racism. The attack on Columbia comes on the heels of cyberattacks on New York University and the University of Minnesota, both of which the alleged hacker took credit for when speaking to Bloomberg.

A Journalistic Failure: Balancing Newsworthiness and Sourcing

Journalists have long struggled with balancing newsworthiness and sourcing. The 2014 North Korean hack of Sony Pictures produced a spectacular revelation about Hollywood's war on Google, but also gossip intended to humiliate Amy Pascal, where reporters played along and effectively did Kim Jong Un's bidding.

The WikiLeaks-DNC emails incident led to intense media navel-gazing. Had reporters been played by hackers? Was there a way to avoid that in the future? Journalists seriously reevaluated how to treat hacked materials and how much emphasis to put on them.

Similarly, when it came to covering the leaked documents from Hunter Biden's laptop or the Trump campaign hack, publications were careful about how they covered it. Instead of running internal documents, papers reported on the details of the hack itself.

A Need for Greater Reporting: Understanding the Scope and Implications of the Hack

This is a complex story that requires more in-depth reporting. We need to know who did the hacking and how it happened, what was stolen, where it's being stored, whether it's being sold, and what other schools are being targeted.

Moreover, we need to understand how this hack will place pressure on Columbia University and its students. Is there a strategy behind this attack, or is it simply a desperate attempt by someone who wants to cause harm?

A Call for Greater Coverage: Let's Treat This Story with the Respect it Deserves

This story has all the ingredients of a major news event – a high-profile hack, sensitive data exposed, and implications that go far beyond Columbia University.

We need to treat this story with the respect it deserves. We need to provide in-depth reporting on the scope and implications of the hack, as well as the motivations behind it.

Let's not let hacking fatigue or a lack of coverage get in the way of telling this important story. It's time for us to dig deeper and shed light on the truth behind the Columbia hack.