High school student arrested on suspicion of hacking into school network

A Fulton High School student has been arrested after hacking into the school’s computer system.

Police said 17-year-old, Austin Singleton, maliciously hacked into the Fulton School District’s network causing it to go down for several hours.

Fulton superintendent Jacque Cowherd told ABC 17 News this hack did hurt the internal system.

That means student personal information and things of that nature was not compromised.

However, it was a serious enough offense to get police involved.

“We assume that it was malicious, because anytime you take down the system it’s malicious and we called the police,” said Cowherd.

It was around 6:30 a.m. on Thursday when Fulton School officials realized something was wrong with their system.

It was down for about three hours until the IT department pinned who was responsible.

“Our tech folks did that, and I am not going to disclose how they did it,” said Cowherd.

However, it happened police said Singleton was found to be the last one on the computer where the hacked originated.

He is not only facing criminal charges but disciplinary action from the school district.

“He signed some internal statements that he won’t do certain things and be denied some access,” said Cowherd.

Cowherd would not say if Singleton will be expelled or suspended.

“It is unfortunate that kids make poor choices, because this will affect the person for a long time and in the big picture of the school district it didn’t hurt us bad – but it will hurt him,” said Cowherd.

Singleton will tried as an adult since he is 17-years-old.

He has been charged with tampering with computer equipment which is a misdemeanor.