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A hacker reportedly broke into the e-mail account of George Mason University's provost, Peter Stearns, and sent an e-mail to students early this morning telling them that the election date had been changed from today to tomorrow, November 5th.

At 8 am this morning, the provost sent an e-mail to correct the information, writing, "I am sure everybody realizes this is a hoax, it is also a serious offense and we are looking into it. Please be reminded that election day is today, November 4th."

Both e-mails were published by Ben Smith at Politico.

UPDATE: A new twist to the story. It looks like the e-mail didn't actually originate from the provost's account but was simply forged to look that way. It appears to have been sent from outside the university to a GMU listserv that sends messages simultaneously to students, faculty and staff.

Brian Krebs at WashingtonPost.com reports that the hoax e-mail was sent to the university through servers belonging to a D.C. firm called wiredforchange, which provides e-mail and fundraising services for Democratic and other progressive candidates.

But wiredforchange.com may have simply been the middleman. The company's chief technology officer told Krebs the e-mail was sent from a computer in Germany, through wiredforchange.com's server, to the university server. There it appeared to have bypassed the listserv's security filter, which should have prevented messages from outside the university from being distributed.

It seems possible that the party that sent the hoax to GMU students wanted the e-mail to be traced back to wiredforchange.com. The perpetrator could have come from inside GMU or anywhere else.

Krebs obtained a copy of the original e-mail from a GMU student and published the e-mail with full header information.

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