Monday, June 06, 2005

Shanmugha college alumini profile exposed

I was browsing through web to collect details about Shanmugha college. First of all the website was down. Shanmugha college is a part of sastra, which is a deemed university. It is really a bad example to take the website down at the crucial time of admissions. I feel more and more people are nowadays turning towards web to collect info about the college for which they would like to apply. The absence of apt information in the website really upsets a lot of people.

While continuing browsing, I got a link to SASTRA alumini network. I casually browsed through the site to check whether there are any other Shanmugha sites that I could use in the mean while. Secondly to check any available comments or feedbacks about the college. I was surprised to see all the alumni profiles exposed freely. The site requires a login and the guest login and password are supplied freely. You can get 684 profiles of students who have enrolled in the alumini site. You have a chance to get their full name, reg no, DOB, photo, email id, phone number, blood group, their current positions, etc. It is all exposed.

I remember a similar breach that happened recently with the stanford campus network, where info pertaining to students were exposed by a hacker. The university profusely apologized for the breach and took systems down to curtail the leak. It even promised to investigate further to prevent such future occurances. I guess, FBI were also involved in the investigation. See the personal info is given higher value in West, where as such info is freely available over here, without any hack. Will somebody act on this?

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