University technology officials are investigating a security problem in the online class registration system that allowed some juniors to access others' accounts Friday.
Bruce Cunningham, University registrar, said that about eight undergraduates reported Friday that after logging into the online registration system, another student's account appeared on the screen, allowing them to see and change class schedules and other personal information.
Cunningham said his office and the Office of Information Technology are investigating the cause, and that the problem may have affected many more students.
"It's a terrible situation. Privacy is the key to this process," he said.
All of the reported security problems occurred early in the registration process, which begins at 7 a.m.
All rising seniors were eligible to register Friday while other students register over the course of two weeks, and technology officials said the relatively high volume may have contributed to the problem.
However, administrators have still not identified the exact cause of the breach, said Michael Pickett, associate chief information officer.
"We've had a few questions about this in the past, but the only time it's even remotely come up is in this huge senior window," Pickett said. "We're going to have to do a lot more analysis and put in some probes to see what happened."
Cunningham said administrators considered shutting down the process once they received complaints, but that by then, the process was largely done. He said 1,000 rising seniors had registered by 7:30 a.m.
Whether any students actually tampered with others' accounts is unclear. Pickett said Friday that he and other OIT officials would work over the weekend to try to investigate any such problems and notify students.
He and Cunningham said they hope most students would have logged off if someone else's account appeared on the screen.
"I'd like to think that most people aren't going to do anything, and even if they were inclined to do so, they were still trying to register," Cunningham said.
Junior Stefan DePozsgay said that when he went to register at 7 a.m., he was logged onto ACES Web as junior Benjamin Davis. "I went to [enroll] and I was like, OWow, these aren't my classes,'" he said.
DePozsgay said that although he could have accessed Davis' personal information or dropped the courses Davis had registered for, he did not. At about 7:45, he logged in again, and this time his own name and information appeared.
For his part, Davis said he was unaware that another student had accessed his account. Davis, too, had registration problems, originally logging in as a Robert Thomas. Both DePozgay and Davis are now properly enrolled.
Lucas Schaefer contributed to this story.
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