Minnesota Man Hacks Marlborough Company's Servers

The following information was provided by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

A Minnesota man was charged today in federal court with hacking a protected computer and obtaining personal information of his co-workers from a location in Marlborough.

The charge is the result of an investigation being conducted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI).

Trevor R. McDonald, 20, of Maplewood, Minn., was charged with violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

According to court documents, between May 3 and June 6, 2011, McDonald launched a "brute force attack" against the servers of Workscape Inc., a Marlborough company. Workscape hosted an employee benefits site for employees of FedEx Ground. McDonald, himself a FedEx Ground employee, allegedly created a computer program to hack into the Workscape system and obtain personal information about other FedEx Ground employees, including their names, addresses and social security numbers.

Based on information obtained during the investigation, it appears that McDonald never used or released this information. The victim companies have cooperated fully with the HSI investigation.

If convicted, McDonald faces a year in prison and a $100,000 fine.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Amy Harman Burkart, District of Massachusetts, is prosecuting the case.

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