Massachusetts Student Pleads Guilty to PowerSchool Hack Affecting 60 Million

Matthew D. Lane, a 19-year-old college student from Massachusetts, has pleaded guilty to charges related to the massive December 2024 cyberattack on PowerSchool, a cloud-based education software provider serving over 60 million students and 10 million teachers. Lane and his co-conspirators used stolen credentials from a telecommunications company contractor to breach PowerSchool's systems, stealing extensive personal data including names, Social Security numbers, medical information, and more. After the breach, they demanded a ransom of nearly $2.9 million in Bitcoin and subsequently attempted to extort multiple school districts using the stolen data. PowerSchool paid the ransom to prevent the public release of sensitive information, but the hackers continued their extortion efforts. Lane also faces charges for hacking into another telecommunications company and transferring the stolen data to a server in Ukraine. This case represents one of the largest known breaches of American children's data to date and highlights the growing cybersecurity risks in the education sector.