U.S. college student to plead guilty in hack reportedly tied to PowerSchool – National [Video]

A Massachusetts college student will plead guilty to stealing millions of students’ and teachers’ private data from two U.S. education tech companies and extorting it for ransom, the U.S. attorney’s office said.

Assumption University student Matthew Lane, 19, is accused of using stolen login credentials to access the computer network of a software and cloud storage company serving school systems in the U.S. and abroad, according to U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts Leah B. Foley.

PowerSchool was not named in the court filings, but the Associated Press, Reuters and NBC News, each citing a source familiar with the case, reported the company’s involvement.

According to court records, Lane is then alleged to have threatened the release of 60 million students’ and 10 million teachers’ names, phone numbers, Social Security numbers, residential addresses and medical histories if the company did not pay a ransom of approximately $2.85 million in Bitcoin.