A group of hackers allegedly colluded with a Chinese computer maintenance company and hacked into devices belonging to internet clubs in order to mine cryptocurrency.
Police in Rui'an on Saturday arrested 16 suspects who illegally obtained more than 5 million yuan ($800,000), according to local media reports. It is believed that since July last year, the attackers managed to hack more than 100,000 computers in 30 cities in China.
The report indicates that the first step of the hackers was to develop malware with which the infected devices mine the Siacoin token. They then sold the virus to several computer maintenance firms, which infected computers in Internet clubs with it during routine checks. Profits from mining and selling siacoin were to be divided between the hackers and their alleged accomplices.
The first alarm signal came from an Internet club in the city of Ruiyang. Back in 2017, club owners noticed that their computers began to work much slower, and CPU consumption was at 70% even after restarting the devices.
According to CoinMarketCap, during this time the price of the siacoin token increased by 400% - from $0.002 in May to $0.01 in July. In addition, the utility bills of the affected internet clubs also increased quite well during this period. Later, many club owners reported the matter to the local police.
Since most of Ruiyang's Internet clubs used the services of the same service company (whose name is not specified in the report), in August the police arrested its executive director, who spoke about the hackers.
At the moment, the investigation is still ongoing. The malware has spread to more than 30 cities, where more than 100 maintenance firms operate.
According to https://www.coindesk.com
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