Hacking of Leverett System Unlikely

The Leverett House computer network was taken off-line least several hours on Monday and Tuesday.

According to the Leverett House e-mail newsletter, there was a "hacking problem" and for that reason, service on the Leverett server was unavailable.

The newsletter asked that students with expertise in computers volunteer help their skills to work on the problem.

In an e-mail message, Howard Georgi '68, master of Leverett House and Mallinckrodt professor of physics, downplayed the problem.

"All that happened as far as we can tell was that the server was down for a while," Georgi wrote.

Stuart E. Schechter, a resident tutor in Leverett House, said that the measure was only precautionary.

"All that happened is that [the Faculty of Arts and Sciences] network operations intentionally turned off our network connection as a precautionary measure because they suspected that our machine might be compromised. No evidence of such a compromise has surfaced," he wrote in an e-mail message.

The Leverett network was working normally yesterday.