A comet American university student calls for a data breach that affected North American schools

A college student in the state of Massachusetts agreed to acknowledge guilty to penetrate the provider of the PowerSchool education programs and steal data related to millions of North American students and teachers who are accustomed to blackmailing educational areas in paying a ransom.

Matthew Lynn, 19 years old, made a call on Tuesday to resolve the charges against the Federal Court in Worsester, Massachusetts, related to the penetration of two companies, which were then blackmailed in a ransom.

The court papers did not specify the companies affected by the name, but the person familiar with the matter confirmed that Powerschool was one of the victims.

The fees were distinguished by the first time that the authorities were determined by the official in PowerSchool, which seemed to display the data of tens of millions of children. PowerSchool is used by more than 18,000 schools to support more than 60 million students.

In Canada, school paintings in Ontarioand Saskatchewanand Albertaand Newfoundland and Labradorand New Scotiaand Prince Edward Islandand Manitoba and Northwest regions They were among those affected by the huge breach.

“A degree in its piracy belt”

Lynn student at the Assumption University in Worsester. American lawyer Leah Foley said in a statement that his actions “instill fear of parents that the information of their children was leaked in the hands of criminals – all of this to put a degree in his piracy belt.”

Lynn’s lawyer did not respond to the requests for comment.

California -based PowerSchool has unveiled the violation in January. She said she learned this on December 28, 2024 and decided to pay a ransom to prevent data from advertising.

PowerSchool He said earlier this month Many educational areas have also received extortion demands related to the same data.

According to public prosecutors, Lynn used PowerSchool contractor accreditation data in September to reach his network and obtain students and teachers’ data.

In December, the transfer of data on students and faculty members to a computer server that he rented from a cloud storage provider in Ukraine, according to public prosecutors.

Days later, PowerSchool received a request from a ransom that threatens to leak names, addresses, social security numbers and other sensitive data that belong to more than 60 million students and 10 million teachers unless $ 2.85 million of bitcoin is paid, according to public prosecutors.

They said that before PowerSchool, Lynn and others conspired to blackmail a telecommunications company whose name was not named to pay an American ransom of $ 200,000 to avoid detecting the data stolen from its network.

He agreed to acknowledge guilty to engage in cybersecurity, steal tight identity, and to reach the computers without permission. He faces a prison for at least two years.