Student hacker charged in Pennsylvania
A 15-year-old Downington West High School student in Pennsylvania hacked into a district computer server and downloaded the personal information of 41,000 adult residents and 15,000 students.What type of personal information? Names, Social Security numbers, addresses.
What was the response? The district notified affected individuals via mail. Police released the suspect to his parents after charging him with computer theft and trespass.
Details: Officials do not believe any of the data was misused or had been planned to be used fradulently. A similar incident occurred in December, when a student used software to crack an encrypted file. After that event, the district hired a solutions vendor to manage the servers, in addition to restricting user access and privileges.
Quote: "The process of logging incidents, and response to those incidents, is being reviewed and updated. More frequent and intensified security audits of the network and files will be implemented." - District spokeswoman Pat McGlone.
Source: DailyLocal.com, Daily Local, "Hacker suspect arrested," May 21.
