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Europol assists the National Police of Ukraine with the arrest of a cryptojacker who abused cloud services for crypto mining.
Europol has announced that it assisted the National Police of Ukraine in the arrest of a 29-year-old man for cryptojacking offences.
The man was arrested on 9 January in Mykolaiv after Europol was contacted by an unnamed cloud provider over the arrested man’s actions in January 2023. The provider had become aware of several compromised accounts and was concerned about the amount of activity happening on each.
Europol contacted the National Police of Ukraine, and together, all three “partners” began working closely to gather leads on the operation.
“Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre (EC3) set up a virtual command post on the action day, supporting the Ukrainian National Police from Europol’s headquarters, with analysis and forensic support on the data gathered during the searches,” Europol said in a statement.
At the same time as the man’s arrest, Ukrainian police also searched three properties connected to the individual. The man is thought to have made at least €1.8 million by using compromised cloud resources to mine cryptocurrency.
“By stealing cloud resources to mine cryptocurrencies, the criminals can avoid paying the necessary servers and power, the cost of which typically outweighs the profits,” Europol said
Subsequently, “the compromised account holders are left with huge cloud bills”, making it a costly crime for those impacted.
To combat cryptojacking, Europol recommends using strong access controls, monitoring accounts for suspicious activity, keeping all infrastructure up to date with the latest patches, and employing cloud security tools and services.
David Hollingworth has been writing about technology for over 20 years, and has worked for a range of print and online titles in his career. He is enjoying getting to grips with cyber security, especially when it lets him talk about Lego.
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