By: Sarah Russell  Follow @snrussell19

Labor Day was a major weekend for spam emails and hacking at many colleges throughout the nation, and Quinnipiac, unfortunately, fell victim.

Students, professors, and staff received emails that contained a link that hacked their account when clicked. Brian Kelly, Chief Information Security Officer, told Q30 that hackers knew this would be a good weekend for it because university offices would be closed.

These spam emails looked different than ones that students received in the past. They came from students and teachers at the university with subject lines about student employment applications, public relations panels, and other subjects that would pertain to student’s interests.

“These emails are using existing compromised accounts, so what they’re doing is they’re getting into a university account, student, faculty, or staff, and then they’re sending or resending emails from the sent items,” said Kelly. “So the subject line is familiar and it’s from a sender that you’ve communicated with, so that’s why it was really much more successful.”

Students and staff who clicked on the link in the email were locked out of their email for the weekend and more spam would be sent out from their account.

“I was actually really upset because not only was I locked out of my email, but it also made me locked out of MyQ and Blackboard,” said Nivea Acosta, a Quinnipiac student whose account was hacked.

Kelly says that hackers tend to take action when university offices are closed for a prolonged amount of time and warns that Thanksgiving break could be the next time these emails strike.