Student Accused of Hacking Security System

HOUSTON - A 17-year-old Cy-Fair ISD student is facing a felony charge after he allegedly hacked into the district's computer security network and caused more than $10,000 in damage.

Cy-Fair High School student Richard Alan Urban is scheduled to appear in court April 13 on a charge of computer security breach, a state jail felony.

On Feb. 9, Cy-Fair ISD started experiencing service interruptions, Cy-Fair ISD Spokeswoman Kelly Durham said. By the next day, more users had been deleted from the network, so the school district's technical team began searching for a possible hacker.

The district's technical team worked with the high school's campus administration to identify Urban as the suspect, Durham said.

The district decided to handed over its investigation to Harris County Pct. 4's High-Tech Crime Unit, she said.

Urban allegedly only managed to hack into the first circle of the security network, so no student or staff confidential records were obtained during the process, she said. The breach only slowed down the servers.

However, it took the district more than $10,000 to undo the hacking, which affected 15 network servers, Harris County District Attorney's Office Spokeswoman Donna Hawkins said.