[ISN] Hacking incident brings guilty plea

[InfoSec News]

http://www.pantagraph.com/articles/2006/02/23/news/107325.txt

By Brett Nauman 
bnauman @ pantagraph.com
February 23, 2006 

BLOOMINGTON - A Bloomington man has pleaded guilty to hacking into and
damaging the computer network run by a small school district in
Missouri.

Henry Curtis Underwood, 33, faces up to 10 years in prison on federal
charges of unauthorized computer intrusion, a spokesman for federal
prosecutors said Wednesday.

Underwood was the technology coordinator for Missouri's Northeast
Nodaway R-V School District in January 2005 when he hacked into its
computer network and disabled other employees' user accounts,
prosecutors said.

Don Ledford, spokesman for U.S. Attorney Todd Graves of the Western
District of Missouri, said Underwood moved to Bloomington after being
fired by the district.

Underwood worked for the National Computer Services Group assigned to
State Farm Corporate South after leaving Missouri, according to court
records.

An employee with the NCS Group confirmed Wednesday that Underwood used
to work for the company.

Ledford said the hacking incident occurred shortly after the Nodaway
County Sheriff's Department uncovered a criminal conviction in
Underwood's past.

The school district placed Underwood on administrative leave after
learning of his 1995 federal bank robbery conviction in Texas.

While on suspension, Underwood used a laptop computer to gain remote
access to the district's computers and disable all the work stations
at the district's elementary and high school, Ledford said.

"Basically, he got mad about being suspended and this was his
retaliation," Ledford said, adding it took a month and $7,000 to get
the school district's computer problems fixed.

Under a federal plea agreement, Underwood on Tuesday admitted to
hacking into the district's computer network.

A sentencing hearing will be scheduled at a later date.