▲ Virtual currency mining scene
The so-called "cryptojacking" crime, which infects PCs with zombie PCs for infecting virtual money, was first detected in Korea.
The Cyber Security Bureau of the National Police Agency announced on April 8 that four people including Kim Mo (24) were arrested on charges of violating the information communication network promotion and information protection law.
Kim and his colleagues gathered 32,455 accounts of e-mail IDs from corporate job hunting staffs from October to December last year, sent mail with malicious code to infect 6,38 PCs, I am accused of using money for mining.
They were found to cheat on the other side by sending an e-mail with a false title and content, such as "I will send you your resume".
The attached document file contains malicious code with virtual currency mining function. When the file is opened, malicious code is installed on the PC.
Kim Dong - dang was forced to drive 50% of the central processing unit (CPU) of PC infected by this technique and used it for computer work for virtual money mining.
If an infected PC is put into sleep mode, it is used for 24 hours mining as long as the power is on, and the CPU usage increases and the performance deteriorates.
Police said the infected PC was measured as a two-fold to 30-fold increase in power consumption compared to a regular PC.
However, it is difficult for ordinary PC users to identify the cause of the performance degradation. Cryptojacking crime did not lead to the reporting of the investigation agency.
Police said it was the first time in Korea that there were some cases of arresting criminals in criminals.
Kim Seo-dang was organized in 20 roles as a virtual currency-related venture business, information security expert, and shopping mall representative.
They used an automated program to do everything from collecting email accounts to dispatching emails, and used foreign Internet protocols (IP) to avoid tracking agencies.
The virtual currency mined through the crime has also been carefully planned, including the Monello, which is highly anonymous.
However, as the security industry responded with a vaccine update, they found that the virtual currency actually mined for two months was only 2.23 coins (equivalent to one million won at the time).
According to the industry, there have been a lot of cryptojacking damages along with the virtual money boom in foreign countries for many years, and the distribution of malicious codes in mining has increased sharply in Korea this year.
Minimize Malware To avoid malware, you should be careful to click attachments in emails of unknown origin and update your operating system (OS), Java, antivirus, Internet browser, etc. to the latest version.
It is also safe to avoid accessing harmful sites or downloading illegal works.
In addition, if your PC performance suddenly drops without notice, or if your electricity bill has risen significantly than usual, you might need to suspect a mining malware infection.
"We will work closely with the vaccine companies and related departments as we are expected to continue to evolve and increase the number of malicious code crimes related to virtual currency," a police official said.
(Photo = Provided by the National Police Agency / Yonhap News)