{"id":58691,"date":"2025-05-21T21:33:16","date_gmt":"2025-05-21T21:33:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.threatshub.org\/blog\/us-teen-to-plead-guilty-to-extortion-attack-against-powerschool\/"},"modified":"2025-05-21T21:33:16","modified_gmt":"2025-05-21T21:33:16","slug":"us-teen-to-plead-guilty-to-extortion-attack-against-powerschool","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.threatshub.org\/blog\/us-teen-to-plead-guilty-to-extortion-attack-against-powerschool\/","title":{"rendered":"US teen to plead guilty to extortion attack against PowerSchool"},"content":{"rendered":"

A 19-year-old student has agreed to plead guilty to hacking into the systems of two companies as part of an extortion scheme, and The Register<\/em> has learned that one of the targets was PowerSchool.<\/p>\n

In January, PowerSchool, which holds data on around 60 million North American kids and about 10 million teachers, disclosed<\/a> a data breach. The education tech firm initially claimed it had paid for the stolen data to be deleted, but then later admitted the attackers hadn’t held up their end of the deal<\/a>, and the data was still out there.<\/p>\n

Matthew Lane, 19, a student at Assumption University in Massachusetts, was charged with conspiring to extort money from a telco and an unnamed school software supplier that held data on “more than 60 million students and 10 million teachers,” according to the FBI. A source familiar with the matter confirmed to The Register<\/em> that the second company was PowerSchool.<\/p>\n