Chinese Police Arrest Malware Developers Who Hacked $2 Million in Crypto
The developers are responsible for hacking millions of computers to hack a total of $2 million in cryptocurrencies.
Computers were initially infected with a mining program and a mining monitoring software — whenever the latter detected CPU utilization below 50%, the former would silently start mining in the background. The cycle was repeated endlessly, with all the proceeds being sent back to the hackers.
Authorities Apprehended Dozens of Suspects Connected to the Hacking
In a joint effort involving many Chinese law enforcement agencies, 20 individuals were apprehended, out of which 11 were released on bail, and 9 were detained. The culprits are responsible for illegally controlling more than 389 million computers across China, while a total of 1 million computers were silently mining for the hacker group.
The security team at Tencent Keeper Program has been credited for alerting authorities to the hack. Back on January 3, the team first detected a game plug-in containing a Trojan horse program. The operation ran uninterrupted for 2 years during which it mined more than 26 million coins — a mix between DigiByte (DGB), Decred (DCR), and Siacoin (SC), — totaling more than 15 million Chinese yuan.
https://www.ccn.com/chinese-police-arrest-malware-developers-who-hacked-2-million-in-crypto/
