SDSC Statement on Recent Widespread Cyber Attacks

Published 04/09/2004

The San Diego Supercomputer Center was recently targeted as part of a widespread cyber attack involving numerous sites across the country, including universities and other high performance computing centers.

While our investigation is continuing, we believe the intruder gained access to a number of SDSC systems over a four day period. In each case, the intruder's activity was quickly detected, and his activity monitored. All of the affected systems have since been reinstalled to states that are no longer vulnerable to the exploits used to initially compromise them. User accounts that were compromised have been inspected and cleaned, and we have taken the additional precaution of scanning our entire user database, requiring users with weak passwords to change them. We continue to closely monitor our systems for any evidence of new attacks.

SDSC's "Defense in Depth" approach to cyber security gave us the containment strategies necessary to protect critical resources. As a result, there were no major interruptions in service to our staff or customers.

Contact: security@sdsc.edu