A prominent associate dean at Indiana University has gone silent after the FBI raided his home on Friday. On the same day, the university fired the tenured professor, but, like the FBI, would not say why.
Xiaofeng Wang, a Chinese computer scientist and cybersecurity professor who has worked at the university for more than 20 years, "is considered to be one of the most prominent systems security and privacy researchers," according to his profile on Indiana University's website, via The Herald Times. But by March 30, he, along with his IU profile, email account, and phone number, had all been erased from the school. And "nobody knows why," according to Ars Technica.
In recent weeks…Indiana University also removed a profile for his wife, Nianli Ma, who was listed as a Lead Systems Analyst and Programmer at the university's Library Technologies division…
As reported by the Bloomingtonian and later the Herald-Times in Bloomington, a small fleet of unmarked cars driven by government agents descended on the Bloomington home of Wang and Ma on Friday. They spent most of the day going in and out of the house and occasionally transferred boxes from their vehicles. TV station WTHR, meanwhile, reported that a second home owned by Wang and Ma and located in Carmel, Indiana, was also searched. …
Attempts to locate Wang and Ma have so far been unsuccessful. An Indiana University spokesman didn't answer emailed questions asking if the couple was still employed by the university and why their profile pages, email addresses, and phone numbers had been removed. The spokesman provided the contact information for a spokeswoman at the FBI's field office in Indianapolis.
— Ars Technica
"None of this is in any way normal," a cryptography professor from Johns Hopkins University, Matthew Greene, said via AT. "Has anyone been in contact? I hear he's been missing for two weeks and his students can't reach him. How does this not get noticed for two weeks???"
And from CNBC:
Indiana U. Law Professor Alex Tanford, the union chapter's president, told CNBC in an interview Monday that Wang contacted him earlier this month as the university conducted what had first appeared to be a "routine" investigation over a grant application and how he reported a publication of his curriculum vitae. …
Tanford said a termination letter to Wang on Friday did not say why he was being fired after more than two decades at the school.
Tanford accused the university of "hypocrisy" for not following its own policy in terminating Wang, which Tanford said was "totally unnecessary," since the school could have continued its effective suspension of the computer science professor.
"It is our understanding that Professor Wang was not provided the due process specified" by university policy, the union chapter's executive committee said in its letter to Indiana U. Provost Rahul Shrivastav.
There is no record of any federal criminal case against either Wang or Ma.
Previously: FBI warns iPhone and Android users about text messaging security
