Oh, For F\*ck’s Sake. Harvard Got Hacked. Again.

Right, so apparently the ivory tower over at Harvard couldn’t keep their shit secure. Shocking. A zero-day in Oracle – a goddamn zero-day – was exploited sometime before May 30th, and they’re only just now admitting it. Like they were hoping nobody would notice while they were busy patting themselves on the back for… what exactly?

The attackers, who are still unidentified (surprise, surprise), managed to snag data from multiple systems. They’re saying “limited” access, but let’s be real, “limited” usually means “they got in and poked around everywhere.” They suspect a Chinese state-sponsored actor, because of course they do. It’s always China, Russia or some other boogeyman isn’t it? Never just plain incompetence.

What’s particularly infuriating is that this wasn’t some script kiddie finding an open port. This was a sophisticated attack exploiting something nobody knew about yet. And Harvard got hit. Which means their patching process is slower than molasses in January, and their security posture is probably held together with duct tape and wishful thinking.

They’re “working with law enforcement” now, which translates to “we have no clue what happened and are hoping someone else fixes our mess.” Fantastic. Just *fantastic*.

Honestly, I’ve seen better security on a Raspberry Pi running Windows 95.

Source: Harvard Breached in Oracle Zero-Day Attack

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You know, I once had to clean up a mess caused by a university IT department that thought disabling the firewall was a “temporary solution” for bandwidth issues. Temporary my ass. It lasted six months and resulted in a full system compromise. These people shouldn’t be allowed near computers, let alone entrusted with sensitive data. Seriously.

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