Two suspected Russian hackers have been brought to criminal responsibility for mining cryptocurrencies through infected computers in state organizations, RBC reported on Monday.
Nikolay Murashov, Deputy Director of the National Coordination Center for Computer Incidents, told a press conference on Monday:
“In Russia, there have been two cases recently when people were brought to criminal responsibility for getting access to computers [of state organizations] and using them to mine cryptocurrencies.”
One of the detained citizens is a resident of Kurgan, who used almost a whole botnet in various regions of the country. In the second case, a criminal case was initiated on the fact of using the site of JSC Rostovvodokanal for mining, he said.
According to the official, attackers infect web pages, and mine [crypto currency] at the moment the pages are viewed in the browser.
He noted that the cost of most virtual coins is very high, so there are a lot of people who want to make money in such an easy way.
“Up to 80% of the computer’s free power can be used to generate virtual coins, and a legitimate user may not even know about it,” the official said.
He noted that the use of large companies’ servers for mining could result in a significant reduction in their performance and significant damage to business.
Murashov called on organizations to pay more attention to cyber security of their computer networks.
