First mining virus criminal case opened in Japan

Several individuals have been accused of illegal use of computer viruses after the police of Japan found out about a group of websites which did not tell its users about the latent in-browser remote mining scripts based on CoinHive.

The Japanese media tells that one of three of apprehended persons has already been commanded to pay 100,000 yen or $904 for storing a computer virus. The verdict was issued by the Yokohama Summary Court.

CoinHive is not inherently bad, but it opens up many welcoming opportunities for hackers: they can mine digital currency through the affected computers without spending their own resources. The judicial issue of user consent has lately become pressing due to newly discovered facts about how much personal data social media owners can collect. In a positive example, the rule of consent is followed on a creative website: it offers to disable all advertisement in exchange for remote mining.

CoinHive mines Monero, and recently this cryptocurrency has become a topic of negative news about its wide usage in malware. Five percent of all Monero supply is mined through viruses, specialists from Palo Alto Networks Research conclude.

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