Musk and Trump both went to Penn—now hacked by someone sympathetic to their cause

The University of Pennsylvania was targeted after it became an obvious target of the Trump administration, with a hacker claiming to share Musk and Trump’s grievances over affirmative action and “wokeness.” On 31 October 2025, Penn said the breach stemmed from sophisticated identity impersonation commonly known as social engineering, using stolen credentials to access systems including Salesforce, SharePoint and Box services and marketing apps.

The attacker also appears to have obtained a copy of the donor database, and some of this information has already appeared on LeakForums, containing memos about donors and their families, receipts of bank transactions, and personal identifying information, according to The Daily Pennsylvanian.

After obtaining the data, the hacker sent an email to members of the Penn community with the subject “We got hacked (Action Required)” and described the school as “a dogshit elitist institution full of woke retards.” In response, Penn has called in the FBI and the private company CrowdStrike, while a Penn alumnus has sued the school for negligence, and staff face additional mandatory trainings to prevent future breaches.