Ukrainian Man Faces up to 6 Years in Jail for Cryptojacking on His Own Websites

Ukraine’s Cyber Police have arrested a man who allegedly placed crypto mining malware scripts on his own websites, local law enforcement reported on March 26.

The cyber crime unit of the national police of Ukraine arrested a 32-year-old man from the Bukovina region who allegedly placed cryptojacking software on a number of educational websites that he created and administered.

The unspecified websites and internet resources had 1.5 million monthly visitors, the police reported.

The police also stated that the installed malware on the websites was deploying visitors’ devices’ CPU and GPU power to illegally mine cryptocurrencies.

The authority has conducted a search in the house of the alleged cyber criminal and seized his computer equipment, bank cards, hard drives and notes for launched criminal proceedings. According to the report, the miner faces imprisonment for a term of up to six years.

Cryptojacking malware activity has seen tremendous growth recently, with cyber security firm McAfee Labs reporting in late December that the total instances of cryptojacking malware rose by more than 4,000 percent in 2018.

Recently, AT&T Cybersecurity reported that crypto mining is one of the most observed purposes of hackers that attack businesses’ cloud infrastructures. In late February, notorious online crypto miner firm Coinhive announced that the service is shutting down since it reportedly become economically inefficient.