Authorities in Japan have convicted a 32-year-old website designer for embedding a cryptojacking script onto his website without warning the victims he would be using their machines to mine cryptocurrency.
According to local news outlet The Mainichi, the Tokyo High Court found the website designer guilty because he was using Coinhive, a cryptojacking script, to trick his website’s visitors into mining cryptocurrency for him without warning them about the embedded script.
The court reportedly described his actions as “malicious crime used for personal game” and fined him for 100,000 yen, around $910. President Judge Tsutomu Tochigi was quoted as saying:
Visitors were not informed of (the mining program) or given the chance to reject it.
The website designer’s lawyer revealed they would be appealing the convictions. The man had been on trial back in March at the Yokohama District Court, which acquitted him as the program “only had a minor impact on the visitors’ computers” and he wasn’t cautioned against using the software.
As CryptoGlobe reported, Coinhive shut down over the cryptocurrency market’s downturn, after the value of the privacy-centric cryptocurrency Monero (XMR) dropped 85% within a year. Updates to the cryptocurrency meant to prevent malicious mining also affected the operation.
Shortly after Coinhive shut down, a significant drop in cryptojacking incidents was reported, as it was the number one script being used for it. After The Pirate Bay started using it to test an alternative source of revenue, a widespread trend of cryptojacking incidents – where hackers even embedded the script onto popular websites – broke out.
Featured image via Pixabay.
