U.P. Cebu confirms data breach on its Student Evaluation on Teaching system

MANILA, Philippines – The University of the Philippines Cebu (UP Cebu) confirmed a data breach occurred to its Student Evaluation on Teaching (SET) system on Monday, June 8, acknowledging the existence of a compilation of data on students and alumni from the university. 

On June 7, students reported seeing details from a public Scribd document with the names of students and alumni from UP Cebu’s College of Communication Arts and Design.

Names and passwords to access the SET system – a site used to let students rate the performance of their lecturers and professors – appeared to have been made public in the breach.

Meanwhile, the school administration confirmed “SET has been breached” but said the Student Academic Information System (SAIS) was safe. SAIS is the data management system used for enrollment and getting virtual copies of one’s grades.

Said the school administration, “Our SET is a local system that is separate from our system based SAIS. It’s just that SET uses their SAIS ID.”

UP Cebu Chancellor Liza Corro meanwhile assured students in a statement, saying no other personal information has been released, save for the SET names and passwords. The UP Cebu administration is also investigating further. (READ: Amid investigation, alleged San Beda hackers release ’16gb database of San Beda’)

The acknowledgement of the breach comes a day after dummy accounts surfaced on Facebook bearing the names of UP students, among others. 

The UP System data protection office has since asked the National Privacy Commission (NPC) for help in reporting these incidents to Facebook’s data protection office.

Facebook, for its part, said it is “investigating reports of suspicious activity on our platform and taking action on any accounts that we find to be in violation of our policies.” (READ: ‘I don’t feel safe, Facebook’: After discovery of ghost accounts, users demand better account protection)

Meanwhile, Corro – also a victim of the dummy accounts – asked UP System to get help from Facebook so that the community of UP Cebu can be better protected. (READ: How to set up one-time passwords on Facebook and other online platforms)

“I understand all your anxieties right now, there are still a lot of things we are doing to address all these issues. Our UP System officials are behind us in all of these and constantly monitoring whatever is happening here with us. Let us remain united in all these threats coming in to us,” said Corro in a statement. – Rappler.com