A Palo Alto High School student gained access to their transcript and altered certain grades, according to Principal Kim Diorio.

Diorio notified the Paly community  that the student used a staff member’s password to make changes to their transcript on Infinite Campus.

“The system was not violated or hacked,” Diorio said. “It was not a brute force attack.”

The administration was alerted in mid-January when an unidentified college notified Paly that it had two nonidentical transcripts for the student. Diorio said that the student received severe consequences and the proper educational institutions were notified, but withheld certain details regarding the severity of the punishment.

It is undisclosed whether any criminal charges have been filed, but Diorio confirmed that the school has been in contact with the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s office and the crime in question is a felony offense. At this point, there is no evidence that any other students were involved.

Diorio said that Paly will take precautions to prevent an incident of this nature from occuring in the future. The Paly administration will begin to keep a closer eye on student transcripts, with Diorio adding that the administration will review its transcript log every two weeks to prevent unintended changes.

“We’re constantly checking and double checking,” Diorio said. “We’re pretty confident that the system is good.”

Additionally, two information technology security experts from the Palo Alto Unified School District offices will visit Paly to speak with teachers and make sure that teachers are careful in maintaining secure possession of their cyber information.

“They’ll talk about passwords and make sure that students aren’t using [their] school computer,” Diorio said.