Canadian man extradited to the US for hacking into US university computers to mine cryptocurrency.

BlockBeats news, November 5 — The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of New York announced that Ryan James Roach, a 35-year-old man from Saskatchewan, Canada, has been extradited to the United States for his involvement in a computer hacking scheme targeting universities, and was arraigned following a federal grand jury indictment; he is currently detained pending trial. Co-defendant Mathiew James Stubbings, a 41-year-old man from Ontario, is still undergoing extradition proceedings in Canada. The two are charged with conspiracy to obtain information from protected computers and cause damage, obtaining information from protected computers, and intentionally damaging protected computers, and face a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

The indictment alleges that between approximately June 2016 and December 2019, the two conspired to hack into computers, steal login credentials, and covertly use computing power to mine cryptocurrency for profit. Victims included educational institutions in New York, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Massachusetts, with some of the damaged computers located at a university in the Western District of New York. The charges allege that the two damaged more than 10 protected computers within a one-year period.