Subscribe to our Telegram channel
Hacker from Mykolaiv earned millions in cryptocurrency using other people’s servers
A suspect in a multimillion-dollar cryptojacking scheme has been arrested following a large-scale investigation by Europol with the support of the National Police of Ukraine.
the 29-year-old Ukrainian citizen was detained this week in the city of Mykolaiv. His identity is being withheld in the interests of the investigation.
In addition to the arrest, the operation involved searches of three households of the suspect. The evidence collected during the searches will help the investigation in building the case.
It is worth noting that the investigation was made possible thanks to Europol’s cooperation with one of the major cloud service providers. It was this provider that initially contacted the European police agency, reporting the hacking of its clients' accounts. The information was then passed on to the Ukrainian authorities.
According to the investigation, the offender had been illegally using the hacked infrastructure of a number of organizations for a long time to mine cryptocurrencies. In this way, he managed to mine cryptocurrency worth more than $ 2 million.
At the same time, the victim companies were not even aware of the hack, continuing to pay for the service as if nothing had happened.
Studies show that cryptojackers make an average of $ 1 in profit out of every $ 53 spent by the attacked company on cloud services. Despite the fact that the phenomenon of cryptojacking has been studied for several years, successful attacks still bring huge amounts of money to attackers.
The definition of cryptojacking includes the illegal use of not only cloud resources but also any other facilities suitable for mining. However, if criminals want to get the fastest possible result, they primarily target cloud services.
This arrest was made possible by the effective cooperation of law enforcement agencies and the private sector in the fight against cybercrime. It demonstrates the importance of working together to detect and stop such criminal schemes.