Who would have thought mining cryptocurrencies in Internet Cafes would make hackers $800k?

When it comes to improvements and innovation, of course not in the right way, hackers seem to never lack them. A group of Chinese hackers proved that by injecting a mining software into some Internet Cafes computers around THE Chinese city Rui'An in Zhejiang.

The cryptocurrnecy mined by "innocent" computers from some Internet Cafes in China was Siacoin. According to the source of the news there have not been released any detail on why the hacker chose this particular coin, but their plan and network has been already exposed.

After making the software to mine the cryptocurrency the hackers needed a way to inject it into the targeted computers and the best way to do that was through the maintenance company that does the checking of the computers. Once they convinced the companies chief to take the risk it was all just about routine checks and lots of Siacoins mined. Actually it was about $800,000 in value mined by Internet Cafes computers.

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Luckily employees of such hacked small companies noticed that their computers were running almost consistent with their CPU at 70% usage and even after restarts the situation was no different. Slowed down computers and bigger costs made the managers of the affected Internet Cafes to call on the police and start an investigation.

Soon the chief of the maintenance company that was on contract with the affected Cafes who were injected with the malicious malware was arrested. From July 2017 when it all begun until August the same year when the arrest occured Siacoin worth of $800k was mined illegally in Internet Cafes from Rui'An city in Zhejiang, China. After the chiefs arrest the names of the hackers and their plan was exposed and investigations continue till date.

According to coindesk over 100 computer maintenance firms in the country from over 30 cities are involved in such mining hacks via computers in Internet Cafes so my question now is who is still using Internet Cafes these times around since internet is available almost anywhere on almost any device? Wouldn't even imagine that this kind of Cafes still exist.

Reference: https://www.coindesk.com/internet-cafes-hacked-to-mine-800000-in-siacoin-cryptocurrency/