“We got hacked,” members of the University of Pennsylvania community were told in the subject line of several emails sent from addresses linked to its Graduate School of Education. The sender, apparently, was the potential hacker or hackers themselves.
“The University of Pennsylvania is a dogshit elitist institution full of woke retards,” said the emails, which were received by several alumni including a Verge author who attended the University of Pennsylvania. “We 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. Please stop giving us money.”
The apparent hacker or hackers referenced the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, which protects the privacy of students’ personal information that’s shared with schools. SFFA appears to refer to Students for Fair Admissions, the group that was at the forefront of the Supreme Court ruling that struck down race-based affirmative action for college admissions.
Penn acknowledged the existence of the messages in a statement on its website. “A fraudulent email is currently being circulated that appears to come from a Penn GSE account with the subject ‘We got hacked (Action Required)’ or similar,” it says. “The University’s Office of Information Security is aware of the situation, and their Incident Response team is actively addressing it.” In a statement on the university’s communications website, the school says, “nothing in the highly offensive, hurtful message reflects the mission or actions of Penn or of Penn GSE.”
