Hacker Earned $2M By Using 1 Million Free Crypto Mining Servers

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A 29-year-old man in Ukraine was arrested for creating 1 million virtual servers using hacked accounts to mine $2 million in cryptocurrency through a large-scale cryptojacking scheme.

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The suspect allegedly hijacked cloud computing resources for crypto-mining, profiting at the expense of compromised organizations whose CPU and GPU performance was degraded by the mining.

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Cryptojacking involves using others' computing resources to mine cryptocurrency, leading to increased power usage costs for compromised organizations.

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A 2022 report estimated the damage from cryptojacking to be about $53 for every $1 worth of Monero (XMR) mined on hijacked devices.

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Europol learned of the cryptojacking attack in January 2023 from a cloud service provider and, in collaboration with Ukrainian police and the provider, tracked down and arrested the hacker on January 9th.

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The suspect had been active since 2021, using automated tools to brute force passwords for 1,500 accounts of a subsidiary of an undisclosed large e-commerce entity.

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The compromised accounts granted administrative privileges, enabling the creation of over one million virtual computers for the cryptomining scheme.

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TON cryptocurrency wallets were used to move the illegal proceeds, totaling around $2 million.

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The arrested individual faces criminal charges under unauthorized interference laws in the Criminal Code of Ukraine.

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Officials and security experts recommends to enable two-factor authentication for all administrative accounts to mitigate the risk of credential theft.