The unidentified hacker made almost 500 million in dogecoin through network attached storage (NAS) systems.
According to the report from SecureWorks, an information services division of Dell, the unknown hacker has made about 500 million in dogecoins, what is valued at $200,000 at the current prices.
As reported, the hacker infected thousands of storage devices. The SecureWorks says it is the largest and most profitable illegitimate virtual currency mining until now.
The unknown hacker attacked network attached storage (NAS) servers, produced by Taiwanese company Synology Inc., and utilized its power for dogecoin mining via a private tool. The move provoked certain problems for the customers of NAS appliances company, who informed about the system’s bad and slow performance on Facebook in February. The users also noticed that NAS boxes had high CPU usage.
After Synology started an investigation, they found a folder entitled ‘PWNED’ that contained CPUMiner, the hidden mining software that had the capacity to conceal the program. CPUMiner was adjusted to operate on NAS boxes, each of which served as an individual miner. The program connected to the dogecoin pool and generated the currency.
The data sent to the boxes helped the investigators to discover the wallet address, which mined crypto-currency was sent to. The amount of dogecoins totaled 400 million and together with another wallet the hacker could make 500 million dogecoins in the period from January to April.
SecureWorks also began the process of identifying the personality of the hacker, who is suggested to be from Germany. The investigators defined that the user, called “foilo.root3″, has accounts on BitBucket and GitHub. However, it is unknown whether the username was used by a single person.
This dogecoin mining attack is one of the most creative ways to make virtual money through illegitimate methods. Last month, the unidentified hackers intended to fraudulently mine bitcoin through a torrent file of the video game called Watch Dogs. The attack presented a new form of the online piracy.
In April, another attempt to mine bitcoin using mobile phones was detected. A number of applications, provided by Google Play app store, were identified to contain a malware program. The apps were quickly removed by Google then.
Last month, DogeVault, an online digital currency wallet for dogecoin, was attacked by hackers, who seized almost all of its Doge. It now intends to repay 25 percent of account balances.
Dogecoin was started as a joke and was based on the popular Internet meme, but it then turned into a popular online payment method with a current market share of about $30 million.
Polina is an undergraduate student at Belarusian State Economic University (BSEU) where she is studying at the faculty of International Business Communication for a degree specializing in Intercultural Communication. In her spare time she enjoys drawing, music and travelling.