A major, medical research project based in North Carolina has begun notifying thousands of women that their personal information may have been compromised.

Officials admit the data from the Carolina Mammography Registry at UNC School of Medicine may have been targeted for years, but the breech was only recently discovered.

The 15-year-old study collects personal as well as medical information about its participants.

"The information does have a patient's name, address, phone number and coded health care information," Dr. Matthew Mauro, the chairman of the Department Of Radiology at UNC'S School Of Medicine, said.

Last July, officials found one of the servers containing that patient information had been hacked.

"They identified a variety of virus and worms, some dating back to 2007," Mauro said.

Once they figured out which patient information was compromised, the school started sending out written notifications.

"Each patient who was identified as being on that server will receive a letter," Mauro explained.

About 236,000 patients will be told their names, address and phone numbers may be at risk.

167,000 other patients had social security numbers attached to their data.

"The patients who had social security numbers included in the data will receive a separate letter advising them of the potential exposure of that number," Mauro said.

Since July, three independent I.T. security agencies are trying to figure out how the data got hacked and who is behind it.

"There's no clear, concrete evidence that the info was downloaded and removed, but we remain very, very suspicious," Mauro admitted.

Because they're not sure what kind of viruses are in the breeched server, it has been taken off-line and many new, additional security measures are being enacted to protect the databases used by the school of medicine.