Student arrested for hacking into school’s grading system

A student in California was arrested for his involvement in hacking school's grading system, sending out fraudulent emails to teachers and changing grades.

A 16-year-old student, David Rotaro, from Ygnacio Valley High School in California used phishing scam in order to access the school’s computer system and change some of the students’ grades. However, Rotaro was arrested on 14 felony counts, reports KTVU-TV.

Initial reports of the hack started to pour in when teachers in Mount Diablo Unified School District started to get suspicious emails, which later turned out to be a part of the Rotaro's phishing scam.

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The student created a fake website that was similar to school’s website and later sent emails containing the fake link to teachers for getting them to sign in to the fake website. One of the teachers did sign up through which Rotaro gathered their login and password details. Then, he used that data to get into the school’s IT network and the school’s grading system where he altered other students’ grades, and even lowered grades of some, as per Engadget,

Where some reports suggest he changed his own grades as well, others say that he only changed those of his fellow students. “We believe 10 to 15 students’ grades were changed, but we’re still investigating,” Sgt. Carl Cruz told KTVU.

As soon as the law enforcements came to know about the scam, search warrants for the IP addresses linked with the phishing emails was obtained that eventually led them to the teenager’s home where a police dog helped discover a flash drive hidden inside a tissue box.

After being caught, the student admitted for conducting the cybercrime and even expressed to ABC7 News, “It was like stealing candy from a baby.” For now, Rotaro has been suspended and currently waiting for a court date. He has also apologized and expressed his desire to work in IT in future.