HARRIS COUNTY, Texas – The 18-year-old Klein Forest High School student who was responsible for the cyber attacks that STAAR testing for thousands of students in the district appeared in court Friday morning.
Keontra Lamont Kenemore has since been charged with electronic access and interference, which is a third-degree felony.
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On Friday while in court, Kenemore, who is out on bond, was given a state-appointed lawyer.
What happened
On April 16, Kenemore allegedly used his school-issued Chromebook to access sites that initiated Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, causing major internet disruptions during State Mandated Testing (STAAR) in the district.
The Klein Forest High School testing coordinator started having internet service issues during the STAAR testing, which resulted in the district’s IT department investigating and finding out about the DDoS attack.
The internet disruptions affected all campuses district-wide and about 3,000 students on their STAAR tests on April 16, which was the first day of the English Language Arts (ELA1/Reading) test. Students were locked out and had to stop and restart their writing essays and multiple choice test answers due to the online attack, records show.
The next day, April 17, 700 students were locked out of testing across the district and had to completely retake their STAAR tests due to the online disruption, according to records.
On the third day of testing, April 18, Klein ISD IT received service interruptions at Klein Forest High School, which affected the district’s online testing.
In total, 6,981 students tested on April 16, with an additional 17,298 students testing on April 17. The number of students impacted by the disruptions to the district’s internet service across both days was 24,279, according to the documents.
When questioned by school administrators, Kenemore allegedly said he knew why they were having the meeting, before admitting to accessing the websites used to send the DDoS attacks on multiple occasions.
After utilizing a link creator site that can collect the IP addresses of anyone who clicks on it, Kenemore allegedly used that information on a network stress tester site that appears to be hosted in Sweden, records show. The site didn’t have any safeguards of legitimate tools and is likely only used in a malicious environment, Neilsen said.