US student agrees to plead guilty to hack affecting tens of millions of students

A Massachusetts student has agreed to plead guilty to federal charges relating to hacking and extorting one of the largest U.S. education tech companies, prosecutors confirmed Tuesday. Matthew D. Lane, 19, is accused of using stolen login credentials to access the network of an unnamed software company, which serves schools across North America and elsewhere, to steal the personal information of more than 60 million students and 10 million teachers. The stolen personal information included names, addresses, phone numbers, Social Security numbers, medical information, and school grades. In some cases, the hackers stole decades of historical student data. While the company was not named, federal prosecutors described specific details matching the data breach at education software maker PowerSchool, which revealed in January that it had been hacked as far back as August and September 2024. The breach affected schools located mostly across the United States and Canada, which use the Pow ... Read full article.