More Than 100,000 Computers Infected by Mining Malware in China; 16 Suspects Arrested

A total of 16 individuals have been arrested in China for allegedly being involved in a widespread syndicated hack that saw 100,000 computers infected by crypto-mining malware. The arrest was conducted Saturday by authorities in Rui'An City in the province of Zhejiang, Coindesk reported.

The attack was launched in July last year and has then spread across 30 cities in China, compromising thousands of devices to specifically mine a cryptocurrency called siacoin. The illicit endeavor reportedly yielded 5 million yuan ($800,000), which was split among the members of the group.

Initially, the hackers created malware to mine the virtual currency. They then conspired with computer maintenance companies, which supposedly introduced the malware to the computers of unsuspecting victims during routine checkups.

After infecting the machines, owners of internet cafes saw a staggering decline in the performance of their rigs, with their CPU usage spiking to up to 70 percent despite the devices being newly restarted. It was also at this time that siacoin saw an upsurge in its value by over 400 percent. It was trading at $0.002 in May 2017 but skyrocketed to $0.01 in July 2017, according to data shown by CoinMarketCap.

Of course, the hacking incident was a double blow for the internet cafe owners as not only were their rigs performing poorly, but their electricity bill also inflated. The owners eventually brought their woes to the police, who then started the investigation.

A month later, the CEO of a computer maintenance firm in Rui’An was arrested. The names of both the firm and the CEO were undisclosed. It was a relatively easy arrest since computer cafes in Rui’An apparently employ the same computer maintenance firms to conduct these regular checkups.

However, the investigation is still ongoing since the malware has spread across 30 cities in China. Moreover, it was reported that more than 100 computer maintenance agencies are considered accomplices of the hackers. As for the siacoin cryptocurrency, it’s currently trading at $0.012 as of this writing, with its volume reaching more than $14 million in the market.