need help

It is possible to protect yourself from hackers, but you will normally find that if you are on a uni network that your computer is not worth hacking at all this would be where you get the viruses mostly attacking you (automated) which means their isn't a hacker physically attacking you you will find that a good firewall like comodo would pick up these attacks.
So if the student has no protection he should be mostly to blame, as he could of put the uni's network at risk.