14 DAY TRIAL // Police in Suffolk, New York, have arrested 17-year-old Matthew Calicchio on suspicion of being involved in the hack attack that targeted the systems of the Sachem school district.
According to Newsday, the teen is said to have illegally accessed student records and published them on the Sachem school district forum Sachemunspun.com and on 1Apps.com.
The suspect, who enrolled as a student at the Sachem North High School this year, has been charged with felony computer trespass. It’s uncertain at this point how authorities managed to identify him. It’s also uncertain how the hacker gained access to all the information he had posted on the Internet.
In a statement published on its website, the Sachem Central School District at Holbrook has revealed that the information posted online in November includes the names, student ID numbers and school lunch designation of 15,000 people. The records appear to be from the early 2000’s.
The records of 360 individuals who graduated from Sachem High School east in 2008 have also been posted online.
However, data taken from the organization first started surfacing in late July. At the time, images of documents were published on an online forum. Additional student and employee information became available in August.
While school district officials say the information has been illegally accessed, they claim there’s no evidence of a breach from the outside, despite repeated checks of firewall and intrusion detection systems.
The organization filed a complaint with the Suffolk County Police Department after the August incident. After more information was posted online in November, the school maintained contact not only with local police, but also with the FBI and the District Attorney’s Office.