14 DAY TRIAL // A 17-year-old student from Fulton High School stands accused of hacking into the school district’s computer network and causing it to shut down.
The denial of service lasted for a few hours, until the IT department managed to track down the origin of the attack and restore connectivity.
The teenager behind the attack was identified as Austin Singleton, who was the last one to log on the computer that deployed the attack.
Student grades were not affected
According to ABC 17 News, the school officials noticed at about 6:30 AM that the network was not working and called the police, assuming malicious activity.
Although Singleton did not compromise any sensitive data or access confidential information, his activity has been classified as a misdemeanor, as he tampered with computer equipment that was not his property.
He is now facing criminal charges, as well as disciplinary action from the school district. Fulton superintendent Jacque Cowherd told the news publication that Singleton declared in writing that he would not do certain computer-related things. He has also been denied access to the school’s systems.
The teenager is going to be tried as an adult. “It is unfortunate that kids make poor choices, because this will affect the person for a long time and in the big picture of the school district it didn't hurt us bad - but it will hurt him,” said Cowherd.
Illegal access of school computers becomes more frequent
Reports about incidents where students access a school’s systems have become more frequent, and unless the educational institutions enforce better security for their computer networks, the number of such incidents might increase even further.
Unfortunately, sometimes the actions have more damaging consequences. In March, it emerged that one student at Beau Chene High School in Arnaudville, Louisiana, used a password belonging to a full-time teacher to “correct” the grades of 45 fellow students.
In February, a student at Oak Harbor High School disabled the email accounts at multiple educational institutions in the district, after stealing the necessary credentials of certain staff members.
More recently, in April, a 14-year-old accessed without authorization a server storing FCAT (Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test) data using a password obtained by watching a teacher logging in to the system.