Former football coach in Michigan charged in hacks of athlete databases of more than 100 colleges

A former assistant football coach from the University of Michigan was charged on Thursday by federal prosecutors for hacking the student athlete databases of more than 100 colleges and universities and access to the medical information of around 150,000 people.

The Ministry of Justice unveiled a 24-count reciprocal Of the 42-year-old Matthew Weiss, who had two seasons as coordinator for the famous university team after working in small roles for the NFLS Baltimore Ravens.

Acting American lawyer Julie Beck announced The costs that Weiss accused of gaining unauthorized access from 2015 to January 2023 to student athletes databases from more than 100 colleges and universities that were maintained by external supplier Keffer Development Services. Michigan rented Weiss in 2021 and dismissed Him in January 2023.

Weiss would have downloaded the personal information and medical data of more than 150,000 athletes. In addition to obtaining students's health information, he also cut in the social media, E-mail and/or cloud storage accounts of more than 2,000 target athletes, as well as another 1,300 students and alumni of universities throughout the country, said public prosecutors.

Weiss mainly focused on female university athletes. He investigated and focused on these women based on their school relationship, athletic history and physical characteristics, according to the indictment. His goal was to obtain private photos and videos that was never intended to be shared than intimate partners. ”

He reportedly held notes with certain women and continued to follow them, sometimes returning to violations months or years later. Public Prosecutors believe that he has endangered the passwords of around 150 accounts about Keffer Development Services that gave him raised access settings that are usually offered to trainers and athletic directors.

Public Prosecutors claimed that Weiss “cracked the coding” those passwords protecting a tactic by athletes that he learned through “research he did on the internet”. He also searched through data breaches to find leaked login details for certain athletes to gain access to their accounts on social media.

Weiss “used vulnerabilities in the account verification process of universities to gain access to the accounts of students or alumni.” Michigan and Westmont College are the only schools mentioned as students or alumni whose information was accessible.

Keffer Development Services, which also has the Athletic Trainer system, did not respond to requests for comments.

The software company based in Pennsylvania runs a platform with which trainers can document injuries to thousands of high school and university level. It claims to meet various regulations for federal data security, including Hipaa And Fedon. Keffer says it works with 600 organizations in 48 states.

Weiss was accused of 14 counts of unauthorized access to computers and 10 counts of aggravated identity theft. He is confronted with a maximum of five years for each hacking costs and two years for each load of the identity theft.

Our office will aggressively switch to the prosecution of computer hacking to protect the private accounts of our citizens, Beck said.

Cheyvorea Gibson, special agent responsible for the FBI in Michigan, added that the FBI Detroit Cyber ​​Task Force worked closely with the police of the University of Michigan in the case.

The University of Michigan refused to comment on the indictment and focused all the questions about the Ministry of Justice. The university also shared a statement from 2023 when they announced Weiss's resignation.

After an evaluation of university policy, the athletic department has terminated the appointment of coordinator/Quarterbacks coach Matt Weiss. In accordance with the university policy, we will not have any further comments about this human resources, the spokesperson said.

Before we arrived at Michigan University in 2021, Weiss worked for the Ravens from 2009. The Ravens and the NFL did not respond to requests for comments about Weiss, who is said to have held the hacking of college databases while working for the team.

In January 2023, Michigan Weiss placed leave, ESPN tell That the school investigated a “report of computer access crimes” that took place in the team facility in December 2022.

The university has one Daily crime log That shows on January 5, 2023 that an employee reported fraudulent activities with someone who has access to E -mails from university e -mails without permission.

Upon further investigation, it was established that a crime was possible, said the log.

More information.