Several public Macintosh computers in Dartmouth Hall, Baker-Berry Library and the Thayer School of Engineering were found to have illegal software installed to steal passwords, according to an email sent to students Monday morning from Ellen Young, assistant director of the information technology support center.
The program computers captured any username and password entered and sent the information to a non-Dartmouth email account.
The College's information technology support center believes that the illicit program may have been in place since October. When the breach was discovered, Computing Services reviewed computer use logs to determine which students had their information stolen.
Young advised affected students to change their Dartmouth usernames and passwords immediately.
In addition, she recommended that students change their passwords for other accounts such as Facebook, Twitter, online banking and online purchasing.
She urged students to report any unusual activity they discovered in their email and personal accounts to Computing Services.
The department has already updated the College's public computers to prevent the application that caused the breach on the machines.
Ellen Waite-Franzen, vice president for Information Technology and chief information officer for the College, said in an email that 80 individuals, mainly students, had had their information stolen through this program.
Waite-Franzen stressed that the department is still investigating the incident and has not released an official report about the source and cause of the breach.
Stephen Malina '15 said that when he received a notification that his information had been breached earlier in the week, he took immediate action by changing his passwords and checking his accounts.
Although his accounts seem secure, Malina said he is not confident that the rest of Dartmouth's systems are.
"I'm sure they fixed this specific issue, but there could be other problems," he said.
Chief information security officer Steve Nyman declined to comment on the recent security breach because of the ongoing nature of the investigation.
This breach occurred in the wake of recent reports that Computing Services is implementing a series of measures to improve the security of the College's networks.
These new efforts include a new login configuration for the Dartmouth Secure wireless network and an array of system-level network improvements.
Under these new initiatives, Computing Services is undertaking risk assessment procedures to protect critical data, along with instituting other policies which include whole disk encryption for high-risk laptops.
The department already engages in routine automatic scans for potential areas of attack. The procedures include vulnerability scanning, which enables computing services to track down system weaknesses and correct them.
