Two Canadians Charged in University Supercomputer Mining Scheme

Two Canadian men have been indicted in the United States for a multi-year campaign that hijacked university supercomputers to secretly mine Electroneum cryptocurrency. A federal grand jury charged Ryan James Roach, 35, of Saskatchewan, and Mathiew James Stubbings, 41, of Ontario, with conspiracy to obtain information and cause damage to protected computers, obtaining information from a protected computer, and intentional computer damage. Roach was extradited from Canada on 28 October, with extradition proceedings against Stubbings ongoing before Canadian courts.

The indictment alleges the intrusions ran from June 2016 to December 2019, targeting academic institutions in New York, Massachusetts, North Carolina and Tennessee. The two are said to have established multi-country virtual private server infrastructure using fraudulent identities to manage the operation, with servers that transmitted malware and mining software to victim machines and stored compromised login credentials.

Investigators say the threat actors specifically targeted campuses running supercomputers, using previously compromised devices as pivot points to conceal their origins. Canadian court filings noted that hijacked university hardware was repurposed to mine Electroneum.

If convicted, the defendants face a maximum statutory penalty of 10 years in prison and a £250,000 fine on each count. The charges cited include conspiracy to obtain information and cause damage to protected computers, obtaining information from a protected computer, and intentional computer damage.