Man pleads guilty to targeting Essex County public high school with cyberattack after he was fired

A 30-year-old Ayer man agreed to plead guilty on Wednesday to charges related to a 2023 cyberattack against his former employer, an Essex County public high school. 

Conor LaHiff will plead guilty to one count of unauthorized damage to protected computers, according to the office of Acting U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts Joshua Levy.

Prosecutors allege that after LaHiff was fired from his position as a desktop and network manager at an Essex County public high school in June 2023, he used his administrative privileges to deactivate and delete thousands of Apple IDs from the school’s Apple School Manager account, used to manage student, faculty, and staff information technology resources.

“LaHiff also allegedly deactivated more than 1,400 other Apple accounts and other IT administrative accounts and disabled the school’s private branch phone system, which left the school’s phone service unavailable for approximately 24 hours,” Levy’s office said in a statement.

A charge of unauthorized damage to protected computers can result in a sentence of up to 10 years in prison. 

LaHiff will appear in federal court in Boston on a future date, according to Levy’s office.