A 29-year-old Ukrainian man was arrested this week for allegedly masterminding a massive cryptojacking scheme that earned him over $2 million in cryptocurrency profits.
Based on the report, the suspect was taken into custody on January 9th through a joint operation between Europol, the Ukrainian national police, and an unnamed major cloud computing provider.
Authorities say the hacker illegally accessed over 1,500 cloud server accounts beginning in 2021 by brute forcing account passwords.
He then utilized administrative privileges from the breached accounts to spawn more than 1 million virtual machines that were used to mine cryptocurrency, hijacking the cloud computing resources.
This cryptojacking scheme generated an estimated $2 million worth of the privacy-focused cryptocurrency Monero into the hacker’s digital wallets.
Items seized during the arrest, including computers, storage devices, and SIM cards, provided evidence of the illegal mining operation according to Ukraine’s cyberpolice.
The suspect now faces charges of unauthorized interference in computer systems under Ukraine’s criminal code.
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