16 Men Arrested For Installing Virus Programs For Cryptocurrency Mining

Police departments in 10 prefectures have arrested 16 person which are suspected of installing programs into the computers of unaware users for cryptocurrency mining.

During the investigation three men were arrested on suspicion of unauthorized use of computer viruses, while other 13 men had their documents passed to prosecutors for the same suspicion.

New case against the 16 men aged between 18 and 48 was announced on June 14, although the first arrests were made in March.

The suspected men all operated their own websites, and they supposedly sent programs to the computers of site users without their consent. One program used was Coinhive, which mines for the Monero cryptocurrency.

Coinhive can be derived through the Internet, but one of the susoected men designed a program very analogous to Coinhive and sent it to users’ computers.

As a reason of that, the man was also imprisoned on suspicion of creating a computer virus.

Cryptocurrency gained v mining using the Coinhive program is separated, with 70 percent going to the website operator and the rest kept by Coinhive.

The sum of money earned by 16 suspects was the equivalent of about 120,000 yen ($1,100).