Guilty plea entered by PowerSchool hacker

Massachusetts teen Matthew Lane has admitted guilt over his involvement in the massive attack against online education software provider PowerSchool in December, according to NBC News.

Infiltration of PowerSchool's systems was done by Lane through stolen employee credentials, enabling the theft of data belonging to 62 million American children, including their names, birthdates, addresses, medical details, and certain Social Security numbers, according to the plea deal, which noted his acceptance of jail time not exceeding nine years and four months. Additional details pertaining to Lane's involvement in the nearly $2.85 million extortion were unclear but the complaint noted that the presence of a co-conspirator and other cybercriminals who collaborated to demand ransom payment from another company. Such a development comes after North Carolina and Canada schools impacted by the incident were reported to have been extorted anew despite PowerSchool's payment of the ransom. "We sincerely regret these developments it pains us that our customers are being threatened and re-victimized by bad actors," said PowerSchool.