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A Japanese court asked a man who infected website visitors with cryptocurrency mining malware to face justice after acquitting him.
As reported by the local newspaper The Mainichi on February 7, the Tokyo High Court overturned an earlier sentence that had cleared the man, who had not been named, of any wrongdoing.
“Uninformed” visitors of the malware
According to the original indictment, the 32-year-old web designer installed the Coinhive miner on his website in October 2017. It was active for a month, using visitors’ devices to mine cryptocurrency for his own benefit – a practice known as ” cryptojacking. ”
The man then faced legal consequences in March 2018, but ultimately avoided punishment. At the time, lawmakers explained that the fault was not having warned him before indicting him. The High Court, however, disagreed.
“The visitors have not been informed (of the mining program) or have not had the opportunity to refuse it,” said President Tsutomu Tochigi, citing the Mainichi.
It is not known how much the owner of the site made illicit proceeds during the short time that Coinhive was active.
Coinhive has long since disappeared but the threat remains
As Cointelegraph reported, Coinhive itself closed last year, having become economically unprofitable.
Its fortunes seemed closely tied to those of the privacy-focused altcoin, Monero (XMR), one of the favorite mining programs that attackers use to carry out covert activities. Monero recorded a significant drop in value in 2018, while a hard fork further complicated matters for Coinhive.
By way of comparison, the service was active on over 300 websites as of May 2018, statistics reported at the time.
Cryptojacking remains a serious problem around the world, with Interpol last month partnering with cybersecurity firm Trend Micro in a new attempt to address the problem.
