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Subscribe to RSSA Pennsylvania mother went to great lengths to see her children succeed when she logged into a school district's computer system to change their grades, state police and school officials say.
Catherine Venusto, 45, admitted to using password information obtained while employed as a secretary for the Northwestern Lehigh School District to log onto the computer system on multiple occasions, according to authorities.
Using district superintendent Dr. Mary Anne Wright's sign-on and password, she changed a failing grade for her daughter to a medical exception in 2010 and bumped up a grade of 98 to a 99 for her son in February, authorities said.
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She also used Wright's information gain access to emails and personnel files, assistant superintendent Jennifer Holman told NBC News.
Authorities said Venusto also used employee passwords to access the district's human resource system.
Venusto told police she logged into the system out of "curiosity" and "boredom," according to court records, The Morning Call reported.
The investigation began in February when Holman reported that a former employee had used the Wright's password and username to gain access into the district's computer system.
"We had a pretty good idea (identity of employee) because of the grades that were changed," Holman told NBC News.
A teacher at district high school told the principal she had seen Wright's name as logging into an electronic gradebook system, Holman said.
After district officials contacted Wright to inquire about her viewing student grades, she ordered a shutdown of the district's computer system.
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"At the time, I didn't quite have a grasp of the scope of what happened, but I was immediately concerned for protected information," Wright said. "We shut down the system within three hours of learning there was a potential problem."
As a secretary, Venusto's duties included creating sign-in and passwords for Wright and several other employees, the Morning Call reported.
Holman said she left her secretary job of six years in 2011 in good standing for a position with another school district before going to work for QVC, an online shopping network, according to a news release by the Lehigh County District Attorney's Office.
The release said an investigation found Venusto logged into the district's computer system more than 100 times using Wright's password.
Venusto used three different Internet-provider addresses, one from her home, the East Penn School District and another associated with QVC, to log onto the system, the news release said.
"We deeply regret this incident and that this unauthorized access occurred, and we sincerely regret any inconvenience this may cause," Wright said in a statement posted on the district's website.
Holman said no evidence was found suggesting employee personal information was compromised or used for illegal purposes. She told NBC News that the grades for Venusto's children were the only ones changed.
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She has been charged with three counts of unlawful use of a computer and three counts of computer trespass, according to court records.
She was released on $30,000 bail Wednesday.
Police said she admitted her actions were unethical but not illegal.
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Leave a Comment:
This is a whole new slant on "helping with the homework" and what a great lesson for her kids...
it's for the children. we can't let anything negative happen to the children....
Agreed completely. What an absolutely stunning role model for her kids. A shining example of hard work, dedication, honesty, and a good example of.....I'm sorry I just can't finish without either wanting to laugh or vomit. She needs to spend a good bit of time in jail thinking about her parenting skills or lack there of and she should be fined heavily for her idiocy.
Ok.... 1st there is a "teacher" researching child pornography... He said it was ALL for research but they found on his computer THOUSANDS of child porno pics... found innocent because just "looking" is not a crime????????
Kids found cheating on exam... some confess and retook the test others said it was their RIGHT to cheat saying: It is NORMAL to cheat.
Stolen Valor act:.... It is free , protected speach to Lie about military service
now this lady... "I was wrong... but it is not illeagle" WHAT????
Is it me or is there a pattern emerging... sheesh... Honesty is a disposable virtue I guess.
Honesty is going the same way as responsibility and decency. "It's not my fault" is the mantra of today's society, along with "these are my rights let me abuse them." What a world we are living in....when parents fail to teach their kids right from wrong, they are bringing the worst of what's wrong with society to the table.
it is all encompassed in "evolution " and hence it is excused by " the survival of the f,,,"
Get caught and LIE. Not good !!
That is like telling the Police Officer you had nothing to drink and can't pass a sobriety test. Or, you don't have any drugs in your vehicle and he/she finds 30 Kilos of cocaine under the back seat.
I would think a Jury will decide whether your actions "were unethical" or "illegal". I am betting on the latter.
Well, she'd fit right in with the Wall Streeters, bankers, or Congress!
So moderators....why did you delete my remarks about this article.
What is the sense of a password if you ask someone else to create and manage one for you?
The whole idea of YOUR password is that only YOU can use it.
They need a course on security at that school.
Logged on 100 times and got six counts against her—sounds like Obama math to me..
@tigerboy, first of all troll somewhere else. This is a site for adults and adult conversation. Second, as an IT professional, since when is it the secretaries job to create passwords for everybody???
Yep , she's a LIBERAL !
This woman is dumber than her own children. What does changing a grade from a 98 to a 99 accomplish?
Wow really? maybes you need to learn to spell and right before you call this lady dumb. It should be "This women is more dumber then her own chilldren."
Seriously....take the time to do it write.
"maybes"?? (maybe) and "right" as in WRITE??? Then you used "write" as in "right" LOL maybe you should just STFU
ROGLMFAO
Even Worse
"More Dumber" = ROGLMFAO!!!!!!
Not insightful enough to understand tongue in cheek? Or simply an excuse to belch out vitriol?
Yeah, I didn't even catch that the first time. FYI - dumber is a word (adj. of dumb)
Jon was not serious Sam and Lib'd...
How can 1POV be the only one to see that?
Sorry Nitpicker :(
I like to right great stories when I feel write about things. I duz it seriously and I graduated the 6th grade and cab do naught naughts to count like Jethros.......It always happins when some smart 'A' bees like dat on de vines.......
It is apparent we have some posters who are "Race to the Top" failures.
OMG, busted a gut reading Sam's comment.
Well the children can look upon their m,other as an idiot. Hopefully she has a husbanc to take care of them while she is off to jail. Some people fail to realize that when you go into someone's computer eventually you are going to get caught.
are you serious? she's not going to jail. do have any idea how overcrowed jails are these days? what it costs to feed & house a prisoner for a day? she's an idiot for sure and a horrible role model but this isn't even close to an iditable offense. have you ever been to court? charges much more serious than these get dropped, lowered, changed, combined etc. I bet you the roll all 3 charges into a misdemeanor, give her a fine & maybe probabtion. tops, that's what she'll get. you people need to get a better understanding of how the real judicial system works, not just law & order. this would never make it to trial in a million years. for one thing, I don't want my taxes spent on investigating & prosecuting something as trivial as a nutjob hacking into a comp to change her kids grade by 1 lousy point.
This isn't hacking, and the IT Department failed to remove defunct user accounts. Mom is an idiot, but I'm laughing at all of them.
It wasn't a defunct user account -- the story says she was logging in using the Northwestern Lehigh School District superintendent's credentials. It's really not an IT issue ... the problem here is that someone gave a secretary the superintendent's login information instead of asking IT to get her a username and password of her own. This happens all the time, in all types of companies and organizations. Moral of the story: Never give out your username and password!
You're right, this wasn't hacking. The mom used a current employees information to log into the system, there was no defunct user account.
Problems that I see with this, the IT/SOC has not followed best practices for account passwords, if they had the mom wouldn't have been able to log into the system. The IT/SOC is not following separation of duties, if they had a secretary would not have created a user account. I call the IT department for the school system a joke.
I'd love to see the written position description that includes creating logins and passwords for her supervisors. My guess is that would come under "other duties as assigned" and the superintendent asked her to because she was too lazy to create her own.
Schools have IT/SOC departments now? Is that normally handled some where off campus? I graduated two years ago and remember seeing maybe one guy who was the "IT" guy.
At a company I worked at we were sure we had great security.
A Company came in to test it ... he claimed that within a few hours he could get into our system.
10 minutes later he was in and had access to everything.
HOW?? He got the company phonebook .... called up the people in the book and told them he was new in IT and working on the system and needed to access the system with their password to check the security as there might have been a breech. He said it worked every time.
It's not hacking but under PA law it is unlawful computer use. Not a crime you see every day here but they definitely have her on it.
And parents that home school do not?
Wow, you got that from the artcle. Are you saying that there are parents who homeschool just to control their kids grades? This unethical woman thought that she could intrude upon her former employer. She claimed to have gone into records because she was board and curious. I would hope her current employer takes notice of her response and well acts upon that information.
I failed homeschool gym. My mother said I threw like a girl.
hahahaha
H25,Did your mother teach you?
I often dream of a world where all humans are "fixed" at child birth. Whenever a human grows and wishes to become a parent, they must then take a test in order to receive a license to become a parent. Once they obtain this license, they can go to a hospital and present their license to a doctor. The doctor then can reverse the "fixed" human.
"Police said she admitted her actions were unethical but said they were not illegal." The actions were unethical and illegal. Does Venusto not understand that logging on as someone else is fraud. Changing grades under someone elses name in illegal. Changing a grade from 98 to 99, shows her stupidity. I'm not sure, but I think the son was doing well with a 98.
If Venusto wants to succeed at all costs, then she needs to start with herself. Being the secretary in the Superintendent's office doesn't exactly inspire success in her children.
And sadly, now she won't have the chance. I doubt anybody will hire her now except Wawa and maybe Rita's.
Way to go Mom! make her do 10 yrs of community service
Ummm, and how is this hacking exactly? She used a username and password.
Logging in to a network as someone else is hacking. Usually the password is guessed, but as she created the username and password it was easier for her.
holly cow man! that's a million dollar question! LMAO
Cheaters never win.
what's up with Pennsylvania these days??? geesh...
IKR. First Sandusky and now... grade changing!!!!
Prisons for Profit: that's what's up with Pennsylvania these days and why there is such a rush to arrest and incarcerate. Type in "Pennsylvania judge kids for cash" in Google to read about what is the tip of a huge iceberg around the US and BIG BUSINESS in Pennsylvania. Thousands of children have been sent to prison just to make the real criminal profiteers more money because we all know the mantra of America today : Greed is good. Greed at all costs, including the lives and futures of your children.
Profits for the wealthy are more important than the constitution, your children and your freedom. And the profiteers are safe because they know the vast bulk of the public is too busy delighting in using their neighbors as scapegoats or just don't care until they themselves have been arrested for some new trumped up "serious crime" and are greeted with the same support they showed others (none). It's fascism in action and most of the public welcomes it because they believe in "law and order". Horrifying.
Zflynn: people might think you are talking nonsense but you are 100% right.
If she s like most parents I deal with, she'll find some way to blame it on the school, the teacher, etc. and then threaten to sue.
Let's fix this topic: Mom accesses school computers using credentials never removed by the school's IT administrators after she left the district.
As the secretary to the superintendent she didn't have system rights to change grades. She signed on her as her former boss, the superintendent and changed grades.
If the police are interested, several parents and I have proof that our public school system routinely changes grades of students specifically lowering them to keep certain kids out of advanced programs. The kids who are targeted are dark skinned children, not wealthy. This is just a coincidence, of course. Local paper, school board, sheriff will NOT investigate. Funny how when a parent does what is wrong, that it makes front page. Funny...just sayin' We have tried to get this investigated for years. Any ideas how to get mainstream media interested on the side of the parent?
And just how do you know this has happened? What proof do you have that would not sway the police to look into it?
why couldnt the internet been invented when I was in school, could of used the help
Created the userids and passwords for her supervisors... only her kids grades were changed... nope, it couldn't have been her. Another innocent person languishing in jail. What has happened to our justice system?
This is so much easier than helping your children with their homework and making sure they are working hard for what they earn!!!! Genius!!!
She was in charge of creating passwords an logins for her supervisors, other employees AND the principal?
ALL of these ass holes should be fired for lack of security protocol.
Hell, what if one of the idiots asked her to design a password for his own personal bank account.
School of Morons.
Change the name of the school to that.
Yeah what she did was illegal.. but she should be thrown in jail for being stupid. The IP addresses she used were from both workplaces and home?!? and I won't even go into the grade changing.. She's just a moron.
It's not hacking if they know the password you bunch of noodles, also its the school districts fault for not deleting her administrative access and changing passwords she had access to.
So if watch you log into something and see your password, the use it to log in myself and do something nefarious, it isn't hacking because I already knew your password? Your argument = fail.
when creating the passwords for others is part of your job, it's not the same as looking over someone's shoulder and stealing their password. and rj is correct, the school should immediatly cut off access for any former students/employees, etc. but you'd be surprised how many places of business never both to do this, or wait long after the person's gone to deny access.
Where was she when I was in school?
Definitely not mother of the year material.
They don't change passwords for years?
Best punishment for this lady is giving her hallway detention at her kids school for a month. Sign hanging over her neck reading "I'm a dumb a**".