‘Hec-gate’ event prompts larger questions about UA emails, cybersecurity – The Crimson White
‘Hec-gate’ event prompts larger questions about UA emails, cybersecurity – The Crimson White
Publish Date: 2026-01-30 21:02:00
Source Domain: thecrimsonwhite.com
Following UA student Hector Gutierrez becoming a campus-wide, and nation-wide, celebrity after accidentally sending a recommendation letter to a campus Listserv on Wednesday evening, other questions arose about how he was able to send the email to over 24,000 students to begin with.
Teneshia Arnold, director of the Office of Student Involvement, which operates the Honor Society Eligibility Listserv, said that the Listserv Gutierrez sent his email through had the “appropriate permissions” set up and goes to “a little bit over 24,000” students.
“Hector must have had the magical touch,” she said. “I saw in his response that he copied and pasted this email address into his email, and that perhaps is what got it through.”
Barret Elder, director of customer relations for the Office of Information Technology, said the office did have to change the style of the Listserv.
“There are many options for how to configure a Listserv when it is set up,” he said. “This one was set to a ‘discussion forum’ type list, which allows replies to the entire list. Once we became aware of the situation, we changed it to an ‘information broadcast’ list which only allows the list creators and specified individuals to mail the entire list.”
The Listserv eventually reached its daily limit of 50 messages and stopped receiving replies. However, students had already leaked their phone numbers and Campus Wide IDs to the thousands of students, which could pose larger security threats.
Matthew Hudnall, an associate professor of management information systems at the University, did his Ph.D. dissertation about secure emailing. He compared the leaking of CWIDs to social security numbers because there are “security concerns” when putting it…
