BLACKSBURG, Va. (WDBJ) – Virginia Tech Police are investigating credit card fraud, relating to a security breach at AudienceView Campus, which the university uses as a ticketing vendor for campus events.
“A number of our students made Virginia Tech Police aware that their credit cards had been hacked into and there were charges against their credit cards that were not their own,” said Mark Owczarski, spokesperson for Virginia Tech.
Virginia Tech uses a handful of third party ticket contractors for events across campus. Now, some students who purchased tickets for recent events are canceling credit cards after seeing fraud charges in their bank accounts
“There are banquets and balls and dances and student activities that use this particular vendor, so we kind of know the scope of the impact,” said Owczarski.
Tech sent out a university-wide email bringing attention to the issue and said it is working with students and AudienceView Campus to resolve it.
“One of the very first things we do after we recognize the problem is we’re going to reach out to that vendor and to say, are you aware what’s happening? What are you doing to resolve the problems? And how can we connect you with our students who have been affected? We’re doing that right now, there’s still work to be done, but it takes time,” said Owczarski.
Mad Data IO’s Chief Revenue Officer Brian Hamilton said that email is one of the most popular media for hackers.
”Most likely somebody clicked on a link, which then what happens then, is our hacker will do something called laying on the LAN and they’re gathering intel information. While they’re doing that, they’re basically scraping data as much as they can.”
Hamilton said this is an everyday threat when it comes to cybersecurity.
“For the company, I would evaluate, this is not a criticism of them because anyone can fall prey to this, I would evaluate all my internal security practices,” said Hamilton.
Virginia Tech will wait until a solution is found before deciding if it will keep using AudienceView Campus for ticketing operations.
“We’re actively engaged with the vendor to understand exactly what the problem is, who’s been affected and how we can work towards a remedy,” said Owczarski.
AudienceView Campus did not respond to a request for comment.
Students are encouraged to monitor their bank accounts for fraud and report it to their bank and the police if they notice suspicious activity.
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