CRYPTOCURRENCY MINING MALWARE THAT INFECTED 1 MILLION COMPUTERS IN CHINA
HAS REPORTEDLY EARNED ITS DEVELOPERS MORE THEN $2 MILLION IN TWO YEAR,
ACCORDING TO A RENCENT ARTICLE.
A local news outlet reported on Monday that police in China's Da Lian
city have arrested 20 suspects from a computer technology firm who have
supposedly taken control of the company's large number of computers to
profit from illegally mining cryptocurrency.
The hackers created and embedded the malware inside internet browser plug-
ins they developed for numerous reasons such as increased browser speeds,
which were shown in display ads that reached 5million computers in the
contry.
Over 1 million computers became infected by clicking the display ad and
installing the plug-in, collectively mining a total of 26 million
digibyte, decred and siacoin over the course of two years, according to
the police.
The hackers allegedly focused on minor cryptocurrencies since they don't
reqoire as much computing power, resulting in the back-end mininig
process to be quieter and less likely to be apotted by victims.
The report also indicates that hackers had a network of more than
100 agents to help proliferate the illicit softeware, such as through
working relationships with internet cafes.
The news comes shortly after a previous report in which another group
of hackers were also apprehended by Chinese police for allegedlt
colluding with local computer maintenance compaies to hack into over
100,000 computers to mine siacoin.