Harvard University reveals data breach exposed 851,000 accounts

Date:
Thu, 05 Nov 2026 02:50:00 +0000

Description:
"Extensive profile information" was taken from Harvard accounts, the University reveals.

FULL STORY ======================================================================Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Pinterest Flipboard Threads Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter Harvard breach data affecting 850,500 people has now surfaced in breach-tracking databases and dark web archives Exposed information includes emails, contact details, demographics, and extensive alumni and donor profile data Attack highlights ongoing risks from social-engineering attacks against universities and fundraising systems Hundreds of thousands of email addresses have been leaked to the dark web after the November 2025 ShinyHunters breach at Harvard University .

The same breach also exposed extensive profile information about certain people, as well, according to Have I Been Pwned? (HIBP), a website that aggregates stolen passwords and helps users learn which services exposed
their private information. Harvard gets hit In late November 2025, the prestigious Ivy League University confirmed its Alumni Affairs and
Development systems had been compromised after a successful voice phishing (vishing) attack. Latest Videos From TechRadar Watch full video here:

These systems contained information about alumni, donors, some faculty and staff, and some current students, as well as data on their spouses, partners, and parents. Current and former students were also affected, it was said.

Harvard soon confirmed that the compromised data included email addresses, telephone numbers, home and business addresses, event attendance records, donation details, and "biographical information pertaining to University fundraising and alumni engagement activities." Social Security numbers, passwords, payment card information, or financial info, was not exposed, it was said. You may like Over 525,000 hit in massive University of Copenhagen data breach Carhartt data breach exposed information from 12.9 million user accounts Hackers hit the FBI ShinyHunters say they have stolen 2TB of employee data, but the attack isn't looking for money, just an apology

At the time, Harvard did not name the attackers, but the infamous
ShinyHunters extortionist group claimed responsibility soon after. In a new entry on a dark web forum, the threat actors said they stole more than a million records containing personally identifiable information (PII), as well as donation data. Since the negotiations with the university broke down, the group leaked more than 1.1GB of documents in early February this year.

At the time, no one knew exactly how many people were affected. Now, after extensively analyzing the leaked archive, HIBP claims data of 850,500
accounts was compromised, including peoples names, email addresses, dates of birth, phone numbers, postal addresses, and social media profiles. Are you a pro? Subscribe to our newsletter Sign up to the TechRadar Pro newsletter to get all the top news, opinion, features and guidance your business needs to succeed! Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting
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"The data contained 851k unique email addresses relating to the university's alumni and fundraising systems, along with extensive profile information for donors, alumni, parents and some faculty, staff and students," it said. Attacking universities When Harvard fell to ShinyHunters, they were the third university to experience a breach in mere weeks, following similar incidents at both Princeton University and the University of Pennsylvania.

In early November 2025, when ShinyHunters claimed responsibility for the attack on Penn, they said they stole data on roughly 1.2 million students, alumni, and donors. What to read next Massive data leak from AI development company exposes almost 14 million records Vibetech collected data from different breaches and accidentally made them accessible online Over 9
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At the time, an unnamed threat actor told the media they gained full access
to a university employees PennKey SSO account, which gave them access to
Penns VPN, Salesforce data, Qlik analytics platform, SAP business
intelligence system, and SharePoint files.

The crooks slammed Penn for being a dog**** elitist institution full of woke ret*rds, who have terrible security practices and are completely unmeritocratic.

"We hire and admit morons because we love legacies, donors, and unqualified affirmative action admits. We love breaking federal laws like FERPA (all your data will be leaked) and Supreme Court rulings like SFFA, ShinyHunters said
in an email that was sent from a Penn account.

At first, the University of Pennsylvania described the emails as obviously fake and fraudulent, but later backtracked and confirmed the incident.

Penns staff rapidly locked down the systems and prevented further
unauthorized access; however, not before an offensive and fraudulent email
was sent to our community and information was taken by the attacker, it said in an update. Penn is still investigating the nature of the information that was obtained during this time.

Penn also said that the attack was done through social engineering. Most employees are required to use multi-factor authentication (MFA) but according to reports, some of the top brass was allowed to skip this step.

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