The second largest crypto mining hubs across industry verticals are in college campuses, noted a research article published by tech conglomerate Cisco in PCMag.

According to the report, Cisco security researchers investigated cryptocurrency mining activity across different industry verticals using its own Umbrella software. Umbrella has the ability to track dubious crypto mining along with client network connections in order to screen malicious activity.

The biggest miners of virtual currency (around 34%) belong to the energy and utilities sector, stated the report. However, the second biggest miners (22%) are university campuses.

Austin McBride, Cisco threat researcher, said that students saw it as an attractive opportunity: leave mining rigs running in their dorm room for years and graduate with a stash of crypto, all this without paying for energy costs associated with virtual currency mining.

According to the rankings, media (6%) and healthcare (7%) industries followed university campuses. Moreover, manufacturing (3%), local government (4%) and financial services (2%) were ranked as other major crypto mining sectors.

In April 2018, a similar trend was observed by Vectra (cyber attack monitoring firm). They discovered that university campuses were leading other areas in both cryptojacking and intentional cryptocurrency mining.

A warning was posted by Stanford University in January 2018 against on-campus crypto mining. The administration maintained that students are prohibited to use school resources in order to get any personal financial gain.