A 20-year-old Carleton student has been charged with hacking the university's computer system last week.
The Ottawa Police high tech crime unit charged Mansour Moufid with mischief to data and unauthorized use of a computer.
Carleton University said an undergraduate math student came forward Tuesday and admitted to school authorities he was responsible for hacking student e-mail and financial files.
According to police, the suspect used Keylogger software and magnetic stripe card reader software to obtain students' information.
He accessed the accounts of 32 students, by logging in to their e-mail accounts and what's called a Campus Card - a swipe card used as both a security pass and debit card on campus.
The hacker said he broke in to the school's computer system to show a flaw in campus electronic security, which serves almost 30,000 users on the university's network. The student said he used a hidden program to gain passwords to access the files. He then sent a detailed 16-page report to the school outlining what he did.
Moufid was released with conditions and will appear in court on Oct. 15.
Carleton spokesman Christopher Walters said the student was co-operating fully but a discipline committee will have to decide if the university goes ahead and expels him. Ottawa police, however, said simply accessing the accounts of other students is a criminal offence.
The school assured students this week that all personal information is, in fact, safe and the breach has since been fixed.
