Some high schoolers couldn't care less about who is named Homecoming Queen or King.
For others students, however, it is apparently a must-win scenario.
And in the case of a Florida teen and her mom, it was such a must-win that they allegedly hacked the vote to get the crown.
And we know now that the mother was an insider threat; she was a district employee with student account access.
Insider threat case revealed by Homecoming Queen vote
Here at SecureWorld, we've covered some crazy hacking stories with high stakes. Like the Russian revenge hacking of the Olympics, the insider threat case at AT&T Wireless, and the attempt to bribe an insider at Tesla's Gigafactory.
But hacking to win Homecoming Queen?! Yep, add that one to the list.
Florida police started investigating when the school district noticed someone was accessing hundreds of student accounts and those accounts were voting for Homecoming Queen.
Laura Carrol quickly became a prime suspect:
"The investigation began in November 2020 when the Escambia County School District contacted FDLE to report unauthorized access into hundreds of student accounts. The investigation found that Carroll, an assistant principal at Bellview Elementary School, and her daughter, a student at Tate High School, had accessed student FOCUS accounts. Carroll had district-level access of the school board's FOCUS program which is the school district's student information system.
In October 2020, hundreds of votes for Tate High School's Homecoming Court voting were flagged as fraudulent, with 117 votes originating from the same IP address within a short period of time.
Agents uncovered evidence of unauthorized access to FOCUS linked to Carroll's cell phone as well as computers associated with their residence, with a total of 246 votes cast for the Homecoming Court."
The hacked vote did the trick, and the assistant principal's daughter won the contest and was named Homecoming Queen—temporarily.
Laura Carrol and her 17-year-old daughter were arrested by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) and have been charged with numerous crimes including offenses against users of computers, computer systems, computer networks, and electronic devices, and criminal use of personally identifiable information.
Before the case unraveled, the teenager unknowingly raised red flags about identity and access management within the district by bragging to friends about her mom's access to student accounts all across the district.
And according to police, the daughter took advantage of that access, as well:
"Multiple students reported that the daughter described using her mother's FOCUS account to cast votes. The investigation also found that beginning August 2019, Carroll's FOCUS account accessed 372 high school records and 339 of those were of Tate High School students."
If that is true, this unauthorized access has been going on for years without being detected.
Who knew it would take a high school Homecoming Queen vote to reveal an insider threat? Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.
