Over 400,000 computers were infected by the duo Romanian cybercriminals who have been guilty of using malware to mint cryptocurrency.

The Department of Justice on April 11, 2019, published, ‘Two Romanian Cybercriminals Convicted of All 21 Counts’.

“The duo was convicted after a 12-day trial of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to traffic in counterfeit service marks, aggravated identity theft, conspiracy to commit money laundering and 12 counts each of wire fraud.”

The sentencing has been scheduled to August 14, 2019. 

The duo reportedly began their operations in the year 2007, when they began sending malicious e-mail messages.  These e-mail messages claimed that the emails are being sent from the IRS, Norton Antivirus, and Traditional Western Union.  These e-mails were sent with a file attachment, and anyone who clicks on the attachment will be infected with the malware on their computer.  The malware would automatically download e-mail messages, which will in the meantime block the sensitive information like the account password and the credit card information.

Majority of the cryptocurrency accounts belongs to US residents, and the malware method has as well been used to mine cryptocurrencies.

While the developers and researchers are busy building secure blockchain platforms and other kinds of custodian solutions, the scammers and hackers are coming up with new ideas to fraud people and mine the cryptocurrency.  Such instances were at their peak when the price of Bitcoin was nearing $20,000.

Meanwhile, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund rolled out a Learning Coin, which is a quasi-cryptocurrency.

When talking about the purpose of the learning coin, the IMF stated:  “The development of crypto-assets and distributed ledger technology is evolving rapidly, as is the amount of information (both neutral and vested) surrounding it. This is forcing central banks, regulators and financial institutions to recognize a growing knowledge gap between the legislators, policymakers, economists and the technology.

It is very interesting and worthwhile to see that the IMF has been particularly bullish about its perceptions around the cryptocurrency.  The IMF has as well rolled a twitter poll, requesting the users to provide their opinion about alternative payment systems.  This was to be applied over the next five years.  From among the other alternatives, it was seen that cryptocurrency scored higher than the other three options proposed by the IMF.

The poll called on Twitter read like:  “We would like to hear from you. How do you think you will be paying for lunch in 5 years.”