Data theft has become a major worry for the nation's schools and colleges. The problem is underscored by a rash of hacker attacks across the country.

In March, Boston College officials warned 120,000 alumni that their personal information might have been stolen when an intruder hacked into a school computer containing the addresses and Social Security numbers of BC graduates.

A week later, a hacker infiltrated a computer server at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and made off with records for thousands of international students, school officials said.

As if that weren't enough, 59,000 people affiliated with California State University's Chico campus had their Social Security numbers and other information swiped from a university computer. The incident marked the third high-profile case of identity theft reported on a major college campus in as many weeks.

Welcome to every chief information officer's latest nightmare: What once was thought to be secure personal information, locked away in a digital database and password-protected for only privileged eyes to see, is now all too often finding its way into the public domain, forcing frustrated school IT staff to rethink how their institutions approach network security.

Not only are hackers breaking into networks and stealing sensitive information with more confidence, but they're getting away with it--confounding authorities and disappearing into cyberspace without so much as a trace, officials say.

More than three months after a computer hacker infiltrated George Mason University's (GMU's) massive network infrastructure and made off with sensitive data belonging to 32,000 students, faculty, and staff, administrators at Virginia's largest university were still hunting for the perpetrator at press time.

Whoever the hacker was, officials say, he or she simply vanished.

Administrators at the University of California at Berkeley know the feeling. Network technicians were left scratching their heads after falling victim to a similar invasion in late 2004--one that reportedly compromised the names and Social Security numbers of more than half a million individuals who provide and receive in-home health care across the state.

The database was in use by a visiting professor when it was hacked, though authorities still have no idea who did it. The same can be said for similar attacks at the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Georgia, among other recent victims.

Industry experts and victims alike say cyber criminals are getting smarter--and their threats are becoming more real. Not only are students and faculty members enticing targets for malicious bank defrauders and identity thieves, but--emboldened by their successes, experts contend--hackers these days will sneak into systems just to sow their cyber oats.

That appears to have been the case at many of these schools, including GMU and Berkeley, where so far none of the information compromised during the attacks appears to have been misused in any way, schools officials told eSchool News.