​An unknown threat actor has stolen the sensitive personal, financial, and health information of nearly 870,000 Columbia University current and former students and employees after breaching the university’s network in May.

Established in 1767 as King’s College, Columbia University is a private Ivy League research university with a budget of $6.6 billion in 2024, over 20,000 employees, including 4,700 academic staff, and over 35,000 enrolled students across 19 schools and special programs.

The breach was discovered and reported to law enforcement authorities following an outage that affected some of its systems on June 24, following an investigation with support from external cybersecurity experts.

In notification letters filed with the office of Maine’s Attorney General on Thursday, August 7, the university said that the data breach affects 868,969 individuals, including employees, applicants, current and former students, and family members.

“Our investigation determined that, on or about May 16, 2025, an unauthorized third-party gained access to Columbia’s network and subsequently took certain files from our system,” Columbia University said. “To date, we have no evidence that any Columbia University Irving Medical Center patient records were affected.”

The university first confirmed the data theft last week in a statement, following reports that the alleged hacker claimed to have stolen 460 gigabytes of data from the compromised systems.

On Wednesday, the university issued another statement, confirming that the stolen data belongs to current and former students, applicants, and some Columbia employees.

According to the letters sent to affected individuals via the U.S. Postal Service, the stolen data includes a combination of personal, financial, and health information.

“The affected data included your name, date of birth, and Social Security number, as well as any personal information that you provided in connection with your application to Columbia, or that we collected during your studies if you enrolled,” the university added.

“This included your contact details, demographic information, academic history, financial aid-related information, and any insurance-related information and health information that you shared with us.”

While Columbia University has no evidence that the data has been misused in identity theft or fraud attempts, it will provide two years of free credit monitoring, fraud consultation, and identity theft restoration services through Kroll to those impacted by this data breach.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is charging six people linked to a multimillion-dollar food stamp and bribery scheme.

In a new press release, the DOJ is announcing charges against six individuals connected to a “sprawling” scheme that hauled in $66 million in food stamps by allegedly abusing the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

The suspects – Michael Kehoe, Mohamad Nawafleh, Omar Alrawashdeh, Gamal Obaid, Emad Alrawashdeh, and Arlasa Davis – are charged with conspiracy to steal government funds and with misappropriating U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) benefits, among other charges.

Authorities say that starting in 2019, Kehoe and his co-conspirators allegedly submitted fraudulent applications to obtain machine terminals that accepted payments from SNAP recipients for unauthorized places, such as smoke shops.

SNAP recipients use specialized payment cards to purchase food at stores. According to the press release, Kehoe set up 160 illegal terminals across New York and processed millions of dollars worth of fraudulent EBT (Electronic Benefit Transfer) transactions.

One of the members of the group – Davis – worked for the USDA and is suspected of using her position to acquire and distribute a list of license numbers for qualifying stores, which allowed the thieves to illegally obtain EBT terminals for stores not authorized by the USDA. In return, she received bribes disguised as gifts.

As stated by U.S. Attorney Perry Carbone,

“Michael Kehoe and his co-conspirators misappropriated tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer funds meant to help low-income families put food on the table. This fraud was made possible when USDA employee Arlasa Davis betrayed the public trust by selling confidential government information to the very criminals she was supposed to catch.

Their actions undermined a program that vulnerable New Yorkers depend on for basic nutrition. These charges should be a reminder that those who exploit anti-poverty programs for personal gain will be held accountable for their crimes.”

If convicted, the suspects face decades behind bars.

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