Student Massachusetts College agreed to admit to hacking on the cloud supplier Educational Software PowerScholog and theft of data on millions of students and teachers of North America, whom the hackers used to force the company and school districts to pay ransom.
19 -year -old Matthew Lane concluded a contract on Tuesday to terminate the allegations submitted to the Federal Court in Worcester, Massachusetts, related to the hacking of two companies, which were then forced to ransom.
Court documents did not identify the affected companies by name, but the person who knew the case confirmed that PowerSchool was one of the victims.
The allegations meant that the authorities for the first time identified who was responsible for violating the data in PowerSchool, which seemed to disclose a data of tens of millions of children. PowerSchool software is used by over 18,000 schools to support over 60 million students.
In Canada, school boards in OntarioIN SaskatchewanIN AlbertIN Nowa Foundland and LabradorIN New ScotlandIN Prince Edward IslandIN Manitob and North -west territories They were among people affected by a huge violation.
“ Cut out in the hook belt ''
Lane is a student of the Assument University at Worcester. US prosecutor Leah Foley in a statement said that his actions “instilled fear in his parents, that their children's information was leaked in the hands of criminals – all to put a cutout in a hacking belt.”
Lane's lawyer did not answer the requests for comment.
PowerScholog based in Folsom in California revealed a violation in January. He said that he learned about it on December 28, 2024 and decided to pay the ransom to prevent the data from making public.
PowerSchool he said earlier this month that many school districts have also received the requirements for extortion associated with the same data.
According to prosecutors, Lane used the PowerSchool contractor's certificates in September to access the network and obtain the details of students and teachers.
According to prosecutors, in December he transferred data about students and lecturers to a computer server, which he rented at the cloud storage supplier in Ukraine.
A few days later, PowerSchool received a ransom demand by threatening to leaks names, addresses, social insurance numbers and other sensitive data belonging to over 60 million students and 10 million teachers, unless he paid Bitcoin worth $ 2.85 million, according to prosecutors.
They said that before hacking PowerSchool Lane and others were conspiracy to force an unnamed telecommunications company to pay a USD 200,000 ransom to avoid disclosing data stolen from its network.
He agreed to confess to engaging in cyber criminals and theft of identity and access to protected computers without authorization. He faces at least two years in prison.