Police seize computers from Panther Creek High student after school hacking

The 17-year-old student, who lives in Morrisville, was seen on security video sneaking into the school office after school on Oct. 22 and was later confronted by a teacher in a locked classroom with what appeared to be a laptop computer, according to the search warrant.

Two weeks earlier, the PowerSchool system, a state database that tracks student attendance and grades, at Panther Creek High was hacked into on three separate occasions, and the grades and class ranks of six students were changed, the warrant states. A total of 90 grades were changed in the system, and half of them belonged to the student from Morrisville, who saw his class rank improve from 67th to seventh, the warrant states.

Police traced the hack to a computer at the Wake County's West Regional Library, on Louis Stephens Road, where the student often volunteers, according to the warrant.

Wake County school officials discovered that an email sent from one Panther Creek High teacher to another a few days before the initial hacking contained keystroke-tracking malware, the warrant states.

Principal Camille Holmes Hedrick has said the school would contact and send corrected transcripts to any university or college where students had sent information that might have been affected by the hacking.

No charges have been filed in the case.