University of Pennsylvania investigating offensive email sent through graduate school system

The University of Pennsylvania is investigating an email that was sent out to thousands of current and former students on Friday afternoon containing offensive language and threats of a data breach. 

A spokesperson for the university told Recorded Future News that the email, sent from an address belonging to the Graduate School of Education (GSE), is fraudulent.

“This is obviously a fake, and nothing in the highly offensive, hurtful message reflects the mission or actions of Penn or of Penn GSE,” the spokesperson said. “The University’s Office of Information Security is aware of the situation, and our Incident Response team is actively addressing it.” 

The spokesperson did not respond to further questions about whether there has been a breach of the university’s systems. 

A banner on the university website makes a similar statement and adds that recipients should “disregard or delete the message.”

“However, if you receive any new or different messages that raise concern, please contact your local IT support provider (LSP),” the message said. 

The email leveled a range of criticisms at the school and threatened to leak data purportedly stolen from the university. 

It claimed the university "loves… unqualified affirmative action admits” and accused the school of flouting federal rules governing student records as well as the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling around race-based admissions. 

The email bears the hallmarks of recent cyberattacks on Columbia University, New York University and the University of Minnesota that occurred in the wake of the Supreme Court decision to strike down affirmative action. 

In the University of Minnesota and New York University breaches, the hacker explicitly came forward to say their goal was to prove that schools are not abiding by the Supreme Court ruling because they have continued to admit Black and Latino students.

After the Columbia University incident — which exposed the sensitive personal information of more than 860,000 people — the hacker provided tranches of the data to conservative activists who have railed against affirmative action, as well as to Bloomberg News and The New York Times, both of which ran controversial stories based on the stolen information.