Ukrainian Cyber Police Arrests A Man Suspected In €1.8 Million Cryptojacking Scheme

National Police of Ukraine's cybercrime division in cooperation with Europol has arrested a 29-year old man in the city of Mykolaiv, by the country's south. He is suspected of mining over $2 million in a fraudulent cryptocurrency scheme

Three properties in total were searched in purpose of gathering the evidence for the case.

The target of "cryptojackings" were cloud-servers to which criminals gain access illegally by exploiting the computers' cloud infrastructures and use its abilities to illegally mine cryptocurrency.

By theft of cloud resources the fugitives avoid paying the host servers for necessary services the costs which may often exceed the profits from mining crypto. In result, the compromised parties' accounts are left with huge cloud bills to pay.

This case illustrates the importance in cooperation of law enforcement and private sectors

European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation, better known as Europol, has been approached by the owner of a compromised cloud server, after which they were notified of the crime. Europol directed the information to Ukrainian authorities which opened the case. All three parties actively cooperated during the investigation with one-each via a virtual command post set up by Europol's European Cybercrime Centre (EC3), which remotely supported the Ukrainian authorities on-ground with forensic data and analysis regarding the suspect.

Source: Europol