Roy Chaoran Sun, Sujay Sharma, and Mitsutoshi Shirasaki, three Purdue University engineering students are facing felony charges for illegally hacking into professors' accounts to alter their grades and gain access to test questions.

The hacking plan was unearthed when a professor was unable to log into his account as the password had been changed without his knowledge. The professor approached Purdue's Information Technology Security Services for Purdue University (ITaP) twice-November 30, 2012 and December 18, 2012-asking them to reset his password.

Purdue security analysts analyzed the logs and found out that someone had logged into the professor's account on Nov.30 using an IP address that wasn't associated with the university and changed the password. However, in the second instance, they discovered that 24-year-old Shirasaki accessed the account to change his grades.

The analysts claim that Shirasaki signed into the Purdue Air Link wireless network (PAL) and illegally logged into the professor's account to modify his grade in his Controls Systems Lab class from a C to a B. Shirasaki planted key-logging devices in several keyboards in classrooms and professors' offices in order to track the keystroke data.

Shirasaki is alleged to have stolen the locks of the professors' offices, tampered with their computer equipment and key-logging access information. Sun and Sharma helped the hacker by breaking into the offices, installing keystroke-tracking keyboards and serving as guards outside the rooms.

The three students face up to18 felonies, including conspiracies revolving computer tampering, computer trespass, burglary, theft and receiving stolen property. Sun also has a previous arrest charge for a November 2009 terroristic mischief.

Shirasaki not only adjusted grades in December, but updated them several times from C's to B's and F's to A's in four of his classes that semester.

He also boosted his girlfriend's grade from an A to an A+. Later, the girlfriend revealed the scheme to the investigators and also disclosed the names of Shirasaki's co-conspirators. She also told that Shirasaki had disposed all his used keyboards and his computer in a country field when he was being investigated. His girlfriend claims that Sun was the one who advised Shirasaki on upgrading the scores and discarding the evidence.