Cybercrime right out of movie lore

Deepa Bharath and Marisa O’Neil

Police are investigating how the grades of seven Corona del Mar High

School students changed significantly and who, exactly, managed to

break into the school’s computer system and pull off the movie-script

crime, officials said.

School officials reported the illegal grade changes on Monday to

the police, said Newport Beach Police Sgt. Steve Shulman.

“Some of the school’s administrators noticed significant changes

in some of the students’ grades and realized that they had been

changed,” he said. “And each student had several grades changed.”

Administrators have identified the students whose grades have been

altered, but haven’t determined who hacked into the computer system,

Shulman said. Whoever accessed the system also deleted close to 1,200

files that had information about the grades and other personal

information such as students’ names and addresses, he said.

“But school administrators say they’ve retrieved all deleted files

including those with the seven students’ original grades,” Shulman

said. “All those files had been backed up.”

The seven students whose grades have been changed are “mostly

juniors,” said Jane Garland, spokeswoman for the Newport-Mesa Unified

School District.

Whoever tapped into the school’s server probably did so from an

outside mobile connection, she said.

The grade changes have happened only in Corona del Mar High,

Garland said.

“Each school has its own server, that’s how we know it’s

contained,” she said.

Garland said she doesn’t recall a similar incident happening in

the school district. The district has safeguards in place to ensure

it doesn’t happen again, she said.

“Every hole has been plugged,” Garland said. “And we’re making

what we call an ethical check to see what else we can find. But, it

seems to be limited.”

Several students have been interviewed, but no one has been

arrested, Shulman said. What detectives are still looking into is who

is responsible for the alleged crimes and how they did it, he said.

“We also don’t know if it was a student who did it,” Shulman said.

“If we find out it’s a student, [he or she] would be referred to the

juvenile justice system.”

That is a far more serious repercussion than anything faced by

actor Matthew Broderick in two movies from the 1980s. In the first,

“War Games,” Broderick’s character alters his, and a friend’s, grades

-- upwards, of course.

In the second, and more famous, movie, “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,”

Broderick’s title character lowers his number of absent days.

But depending on the age of the perpetrator, he or she could be

tried as an adult too, Shulman said.

“But this is definitely a criminal investigation,” Shulman said.

“It’s a felony to go into a computer system and change valuable

data.”

Anyone with information is asked to call the Newport Beach Police

Department at (800) 550-6273.

* DEEPA BHARATH covers public safety and courts. She may be

reached at (949) 574-4226 or by e-mail at deepa.bharath@ latimes.com.

MARISA O’NEIL

covers education. She may be reached at (949) 574-4268 or by

e-mail at marisa.oneil@

latimes.com.