Hackers collude with maintenance firm to target Internet Cafes’ mining powers

The hackers are always up to something. This time looks like they have targeted the internet cafes to steal their computational power to mine Siacoin. The case happened in RuiÁn city in Zhejiang province of People’s Republic of China. Here, a group of hackers colluded with a computer maintenance firm. These two targeted the computers of cyber cafes to mine cryptocurrencies.

The police arrested 16 individuals who were suspected to make almost five mil USD by targeting more than 100,000 computers. The attack was pretty widespread given they targeted cafes across 30 cities on mainland China. They were engaged in these activities since July of the last year.

They have developed a very unique malware which utilized the mining power to specifically mine Siacoin. The hackers felt a little entrepreneurial and pitched their plan to the computer maintenance firm. The idea was that the firm will help them to get into the computers of the cyber cafes while their routine checkups.

The arrangement was very precise on how to split the profits made on the Siacoin mining. But the problem was that due to excessive stealing of the computational power, the cafes detected the slow speed. Even after the restart almost 70 percent of computational power was going into the mining efforts. It was not clear from the perspective of the cafes. But the time coincided with the jump in the prices of the Siacoin. The bump was almost of 400%.

Since the billing of the case was also going up the owners suspected some wrongdoings and called the law enforcement authorities. The authorities located the firm as the problem was assumed widespread among all the cafes who employed the same firms. The firm’s chief was arrested and flipped on his comrades.

The case is still investigated as it has now gone national in China. Almost across 30 cities and 100 computer maintenance firms’ involvement, the case has captured the attention of law authorities and crypto community both at the same time.