Cyber Threat Actor: Jose Bautista

Jose Bautista, also known by the alias Jose Bautista, is an individual who was identified as an 18‑year‑old student residing in the United States of America. He came to public attention in May 2014 after being arrested by the Miami School Board Police for allegedly gaining unauthorized access to the grading system at Dr. Michael M. Krop Senior High School in Northwest Miami‑Dade. According to the arrest report and subsequent news coverage, Bautista modified his own report card and changed the grades of at least four other students, in addition to altering other information within the school’s academic records. Friends of the affected students stated that Bautista had approached them earlier in the school year to inquire whether they desired grade adjustments, and he later provided a written confession to the school principal. Following his arrest, a judge set a bond of $20,000 and ordered house arrest with GPS monitoring, after which he was released from custody. The school district emphasized that such incidents are treated seriously under its Code of Student Conduct, noting that corrective actions could extend to a recommendation for expulsion, while Bautista’s graduation status remained under investigation at the time.

The incident illustrates a targeting pattern focused on the education sector, specifically a public high school located in the Miami‑Dade region of Florida. The described activity involved accessing the school’s grading platform, manipulating grade entries, and altering related academic data, which constitutes a form of unauthorized data modification rather than the deployment of malware or the use of specific exploit tools. No mention of malware families, particular initial access vectors, or distinctive tooling styles appears in the available sources, so those aspects are not included in this profile. There is no publicly established attribution to a state actor, criminal consortium, or any broader affiliations; the case is treated as an individual act of misconduct. The grade alteration episode at Dr. Michael M. Krop Senior High School stands as the sole publicly reported operation linked to this individual, representing a discrete incident of insider threat within an educational institution.