19-Year-Old to Plead Guilty to Hacking Charges After Data Breach of Millions of Schoolchildren
A shocking development has unfolded in the world of cybercrime as a 19-year-old Massachusetts teenager, Matthew D. Lane, has agreed to plead guilty to multiple hacking charges related to a high-profile data breach that compromised tens of millions of schoolchildren's sensitive information.
According to the Justice Department, Lane entered into a plea agreement for his role in several high-profile hacking episodes, including the penetration of PowerSchool, a cloud and analytics provider that serves K-12 schools across North America. The company, described as "one of the top tech education companies" in the country, recently disclosed that its network had been compromised by Lane, resulting in the theft of sensitive data on tens of millions of children.
The stolen information included Social Security numbers, dates of birth, confidential medical information, and other personal data sourced from PowerSchool's network. Not long after the breach, the company received an extortion message threatening to "leak worldwide" the names, email addresses, phone numbers, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, medical information, residential addresses, parent and guardian information, and passwords of more than 60 million students and 10 million teachers if a ransom was not paid.
According to federal prosecutors, Lane was part of a criminal group that stole data from a telecommunications firm and then sought to extort the company for $200,000. It is unclear who actually hacked the telecom, but Lane allegedly contacted the company using an anonymous email, threatening to leak the stolen data unless they paid the ransom in Bitcoin.
"Matthew Lane apparently thought he found a way to get rich quick, but this 19-year-old now stands accused of hiding behind his keyboard to gain unauthorized access to an education software provider to obtain sensitive data which was used in an attempt to extort millions of dollars," said FBI official Kimberly Milka.
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