Authorities in Russia have prosecuted two Russians for illegally mining cryptocurrencies using government computers. The news comes from local press coverage TASS.
According to TASS, the two Russian men were targeting the hardware of Russian state organizations to mine digital coins using web browsers.
The published report on the news does not reveal the identities of the criminals, but it reveals that one of the charged men is a Kurgan resident. The perpetrator used almost an entire botnet in multiple regions on Russia. In a second instance, a criminal case was started on the fact that there was a usage of the JSCÂ Rostovvodokanal for mining cryptos.
A botnet is usually used to service a DDoS attacks, send spam, or steal data. What is more important, the running of botnet allows the attacker to access the device of interest and its connection.
Nikolay Murashov, a deputy director of the National Coordination Center for Computer Incidents, there have been two cases of Russian citizens using government equipment to mine cryptocurrencies who are brought to charges.
Mr. Murashov also noted that the large electricity costs are also triggering illegal mining activities in the country, as normal computers are usually lagging behind in terms of “crypto mining opportunities”.
The other aspect of the excessive utilization of processing power is that it causes massive degradation of the computers’ performance that results in a huge loss for all affected businesses and stakeholders.
Murashov also added the staggering fact that up to 80% of the computer’s free power can be maliciously used to mine digital coins, and the user may not even know this is happening on their device.
More about crypto hacking and illegal mining can be found here: