A Saskatoon man could be extradited to the U.S. to face hacking charges

Ethernet cables in a supercomputer at the San Diego Supercomputer Center at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) in San Diego, California, U.S., on Monday, March 1, 2021. (Bing Guan/Bloomberg)

A King’s Bench judge has committed a Saskatoon man for extradition to the United States to stand trial on hacking charges.

The U.S. Department of Justice alleges that in 2017, Saskatoon’s Ryan Roach conspired with an Ontario man to hack into a research supercomputer at a New York State educational institution. This, in a scheme to divert its computing power to mine an obscure cryptocurrency called Electroneum.

Canada’s Attorney General Sean Fraser applied for the extradition order at the request of the U.S. government, and in a May 7 decision, Justice Grant Currie signed off.

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Now, Fraser is the only person standing between Roach and surrender to the U.S. authorities.

Under the Extradition Act, judges are asked to weigh the evidence submitted against the terms of an equivalent Canadian Criminal Code offence. If they find the evidence would be sufficient to commit someone for trial in Canada — if the alleged crime had occurred in this country — they must proceed with the extradition order.

In this case, the corresponding Canadian offence is “conspiracy to commit unauthorized use of computer,” Currie wrote.

According to Justice Currie, there’s no dispute that “unauthorized computer use” took place, that the networks of three U.S. schools were breached and that Roach was involved.

“That unauthorized use included obtaining unrestricted access to the supercomputer, installation of malicious software that included a rootkit, a keylogger program and malware that was designed to extract remote login credentials and other files; and installation of a file to facilitate using the supercomputer for cryptocurrency mining.”

Currie said U.S. authorities provided evidence showing a European server used to launch the attack on the post-secondary institution was registered to “John Vega” at the email address [e-mail], but investigators were able to tie the email address to others controlled by Roach.

During the time of the attack on the main target, referred to as Institution 1 in the court record, payment for the European server was made by “Ryan Roach” using a Gmail account that investigators determined was used as a backup for the John Vega email account.

Currie writes the cost for Institution 1 to rebuild its supercomputer was around $337,000 USD.

Investigators also provided the Google search history associated with an eponymous Gmail account owned by Roach. It included hundreds of searches related to hacking, virtual currency mining, supercomputers, Institutions 1 and 2 and the concealment of online activities.

In the days following the attack, Currie says Roach searched online computer exploits related to the specific computer architecture used at Institution 1 and later researched how to delete server logs.

Although Roach was involved in the attack, Currie said the evidence he reviewed demonstrate another person, Mathiew James Stubbings, was the principal actor.

Roach told the court he had teamed up with Stubbings on unrelated business, and that Stubbings had access to the two servers involved in the attack.

He maintains he was unaware of Stubbings’ plan and did not learn about the hacks until they were already underway, at which point he began researching to find out what Stubbings was doing. Roach says that should be clear from the evidence, because he only began researching high-performance computing at Institution 1 during the attack, and not before.

But given the evidence he reviewed, Currie says a reasonable jury with proper instructions could potentially convict Roach of conspiracy, so he approved the extradition order.

Roach has until June 6 to file an appeal with Saskatchewan’s highest court, but his lawyer says they’re skipping the appeal and making submissions directly to the federal Minister of Justice.

And according to the Ministry of Justice, making the submissions to Fraser has bought Roach more time in Canada. With this high-level appeal in play, the deadline for the minister to decide whether to surrender Roach for extradition has been pushed back from early August to October 4.

“The extradition process for Mr. Roach is currently at the Ministerial phase,” a spokesperson for the ministry told CTV News in an emailed statement.

“The Minister of Justice will decide on whether to surrender Mr. Roach to the United States. During this process, the Minister can take into consideration any submissions made by the person sought for extradition with respect to why they believe their surrender should not be ordered,” the ministry said.

“Should the minister order his surrender, [Roach could] seek a judicial review of the minister’s decision.”

The U.S. Department of Justice declined to comment on the case.