A hacker has broken into a server at Kobe University and installed a program attempting to gain illegal access to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's servers in the United States, university officials said Tuesday.
There has not been any damage to NASA's servers, the officials said.
The university became aware of the intrusion when NASA sent it an e-mail on June 17 saying there had been repeated attempts by the school to illegally access its server. The national university is located in Kobe's Nada Ward.
Of the approximately 100 servers at the university, the hacker accessed one that carries a bulletin board system to notify students about canceled classes and installed a suspicious program into it on April 21, the officials said.
The university immediately closed down the bulletin board system after it heard from NASA, they said.
The school has shut down part of its server while it looks into the possibility that data, including account IDs and passwords of about 20,000 students and personnel, may have been leaked, the officials said.