A hacker has claimed responsibility for the recent University of Pennsylvania breach, revealing that it was far more severe than initially reported. The incident began when alumni and students received multiple offensive emails from legitimate Penn.edu addresses, claiming that the university had been hacked. Although Penn described these as “fraudulent emails,” the attacker later confirmed that they had gained full access to multiple internal systems through a compromised account. This access allegedly allowed the exfiltration of sensitive data belonging to ~1.2 million donors, alumni, and students — including personal details, estimated net worth, donation history, and demographic data.

The hacker claimed to have exfiltrated large volumes of data before losing access. In retaliation, they used remaining access to send offensive emails to roughly 700,000 recipients. The attacker later published a 1.7 GB archive of allegedly stolen data online, stating that their motivation was financial, driven by the value of Penn’s wealthy donor database rather than political intent. Donors have been advised to remain cautious against phishing and impersonation attempts using the leaked data.

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