The FBI tracked down Jonathan Powell, 29, and arrested him for one count of fraud in connection with computers. If convicted, Powell could face five years in prison.

Powell attempted to hack into 2,000 computers belonging to two universities in New York. He used the info from the email accounts to access social media and other accounts.

The FBI was able to track down his IP address and identified Powell as the hacker. The charges are that Powell, who lives in Phoenix, intentionally accessed the computers without the owners permission. In doing so, he caused damage and loss during a one-year period costing more than $5,000.

An FBI agent, who has knowledge of the case, stated that Powell gained access to the accounts by using a password reset utility on the school's email servers. Once in, he reset the account passwords and started digging around for access to other accounts such as Apple iCloud, Facebook, Yahoo, Google and LinkedIn. Powell accessed these accounts in order to find additional personal info.

The investigation confirmed that Powell accessed the reset utility 18,640 times from his IP. During that period, from October 2015 to September 2016, password resets were attempted on 2,054 email accounts and of which 1,378 were successfully reset.

Source: SCMagazine