A malicious program for hidden cryptocurrency mining, distributed among a million computers in China, brought its creators about two million dollars in two years.
Police in the Chinese city of Dalian on Monday arrested 20 suspected employees of a computer firm that allegedly attacked computers to engage in illegal mining, according to a local news outlet.
Hackers created and injected malware into Internet browser plug-ins designed for various purposes, such as improving browsing speed, that popped up in display ads.
By clicking on ads and By installing such a program, users ended up downloading the program to almost a million computers themselves. The mining capacity was 26 million Digibite, Decred and Siacoin coins over two years. The hackers apparently wanted to mine more of the smallest coins since they do not require significant computing power, allowing gray mining to remain hidden.
The hackers also created a network of 100 agents who promoted illegal mining software through cooperation with internet cafes.
Recently, another group of hackers was also arrested in China for allegedly colluding with a local maintenance company that hacked 100,000 computers in Internet cafe for the purpose of hidden mining of siacoin coin.
According to coindesk.com
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