In China, 16 people were arrested who earned $ 800,000 on the illegal mining of Siacoin cryptocurrency in the Internet cafes in dozens of Chinese cities, CoinDesk reports.
According to the police of Chinese Ruian (Zhejiang Province), hackers in collusion with serving companies hacked 100,000 computers in Internet cafes in 30 Chinese cities . Their income was 5 million yuan ($ 800,000).
Hackers used a malicious program that used the computing resources of infected devices to extract Siacoin crypto currency. Malicious software was sold to employees of computer maintenance companies who could download it to a PC in an Internet cafe during scheduled checks.
Suspicions arose in July 2017, when employees of Internet cafes in Ruyan noticed that their computers began to work very slowly. The CPU performance dropped by 70% even after the reboot.
Around the same time, the price of Siacoin according to CoinMarketCap grew by 400% from $ 0.002 in May to more than $ 0.01 in July. Accounts for utility services of Internet cafe Ruiana during this period also significantly increased. This caused their owners to contact the police.
Most Internet cafes in Ruian were served by one company. Its executive director was arrested in August last year, and disclosed information about hackers.