Student who hacked university and sold exam answers jailed

A postgraduate who hacked university computer systems and sold exam answers for thousands of pounds has been jailed.

Hayder Aljayyash was studying for a master’s degree in embedded system design at the University of South Wales when he broke into its systems between November 2017 and May 2019.

At Cardiff Crown Court, Aljayyash, who is from Iraq, was jailed for 20 months, the BBC reported.

His housemate and fellow student Noureldien Eltarki, who found students to buy the papers, was given a nine-month suspended sentence and ordered to do 200 hours of unpaid work.

Both had pleaded guilty at a previous hearing.

The BBC reported that the hacking was discovered by a maths lecturer, Liam Harris, who found that a number of students appeared to have answered questions by copying his own marking scheme, some of them even incorporating his own typing mistakes.

IP records were traced to a house in Treforest where Aljayyash, 29, and Eltarki, 30, were living. Police seized equipment and found USB sticks and a laptop containing files matching those which had been illegally downloaded from the university’s servers.

The court heard that Aljayyash had made about £20,000 from the fraud, while the investigation and new security measures had cost the university more than £100,000.

Details of the case emerged amid mounting concern about contract cheating, where students get someone else to help them with assignments. Reports of cheating have exploded during the Covid-driven shift to online learning.

After the hearing, a University of South Wales spokesman said: “We are very grateful to the work of South Wales Police in investigating this case. We take our approach to data security very seriously and undertook a thorough review of our systems following the data attack.

“We have made a number of changes to further protect our data and to avoid the future likelihood of such attacks.”

chris.havergal@timeshighereducation.com