Citing a local news report, CoinDesk said that police in Chinas Da Lian city arrested 20 suspects from a computer technology company who allegedly gained control of the large number of computers to profit from illicit cryptocurrency mining. The hackers created and embedded the malware inside internet browser plug-ins.
By clicking the display ads and installing the plug-ins, over a million computers were subsequently infected, mining a total of 26 million digibyte, decred and siacoin tokens over the course of two years, according to the police.
The report also indicated the hackers developed a network of more than 100 agents to help propagate the illicit mining software, such as through working relationships with internet cafes.
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