FL Mom Hacks Homecoming Queen Election

A mother and daughter have been charged with hacking the election to become 2020 homecoming queen at the J.M. Tate High School near Pensacola, Florida. The electronic equivalent of fingerprints at the crime scene indicated that dozens of student votes were lodged from a computing device with a single internet address. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement arrested Laura Rose Carroll, 50, and her 17-year-old daughter, both of Pensacola, and charged them with unlawful use of computers, two-way communications devices and personally identifiable information. The mother-daughter duo accessed 117 student accounts and voted 246 times, but all from the same IP address. District IT department noticed the unauthorized access, and eventually discovered the fraudlent votes.

The daughter was named winner in October, but in November, the Escambia County School District reported unauthorized access to hundreds of student accounts, the FDLE said. Carroll, an elementary school assistant principal, had access to the school district's computer system that tracks student information. Witnesses in the homecoming queen case reported that Carroll and her daughter both tapped into the student record system. The daughter was know to log into her mom's school account and openly shared information, grades, and schedules with others. Parents will go a long way to advance their children's prospects, and technology opens up new avenues. In March, police in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, accused a mother of creating deepfake videos to undermine the prospects of her daughter's cheerleading rivals.

Credits: 

https://www.cnet.com/news/florida-mother-daughter-charged-with-hacking-homecoming-queen-election/