Following the discovery of widespread security glitches in student ID cards, university officials will remove sensitive personal information from all of the cards by October.
Officials will re-encode students’ ID cards one-by-one by swiping them through computers that will be set up all across the campus within the month to make them secure. They urged students to take advantage of a testing process begun Tuesday where they could get cards re-encoded in order to “avoid long lines over the next few weeks at campus-wide re-encoding stations.”
The changes are in direct response to a student group’s discovery last semester that personal identification numbers and other information from card readers could be downloaded using as little as $20 worth of hardware, said University Registrar David Robb, who is leading the re-encoding effort.
Robb said they cannot release the specifics of the information officials are attempting to protect, nor the probability of fraud on the current card.
“We do not discuss how the card works or what is on the card and what is not,” Robb said.
He did say, however, that the current campaign is an additional precaution to ensure that all student information remains safe within the card’s magnetic strip.
Chris Conroy, a computer science and Spanish and Portuguese languages and literatures major who is now a Diamondback columnist, was a member of the student group that identified the cards’ vulnerability. He said the students found re-encoding necessary because the current cards still contain university ID numbers which could also be a target of theft.
Unlike last semester’s security changes that replaced all student cards after discovering that the old system using social security numbers was ripe with opportunities for fraud and identity theft, university officials said this month’s re-encoding will completely overhaul the old system.
“It’s an improvement over what we did last spring,” Robb said. “We decided that we’d take what was there and do something completely and absolutely different.”
Officials began testing a re-encoding process throughout two dorms Tuesday, which is expected to continue through early next week. Officials said the tests were to ensure that the newly encoded cards would not prevent students from entering their buildings or purchasing food in dining halls.
“We’re trying to make it as effortless and painless as possible,” Robb said. “We’re going to be roving and take ourselves to the students.”
The re-encoding has not caused any major problems for students interviewed yesterday, and officials said the tests have been largely successful so far.
Zainab Abdul-Rahim, a freshman sociology major who had her card re-encoded at Somerset Hall on Tuesday, has experienced no difficulties in entering her dorm or getting food at the diners. The process only involved four swipes on a laptop computer reader after waiting in line for five to six minutes, she said.
“It was quick and easy,” she said. “I didn’t have to go too far or go too far out of my way.”
Cards not fixed by the beginning of next month will cease to work, Robb said.
Contact reporters Ben Slivnick and Andrew Vanacore at newsdesk@dbk.umd.edu.
