In a bid to gain computational power to mine cryptocurrency remotely, a Ukrainian man who installed mining scripts on his own websites has been arrested by cyberpolice in the country.

The arrest was due to illegal crypto extraction activities on a collection of websites owned by the suspect which attracts around 1.5 million visitors per month.

The Ukrainian whose identity is yet to be disclosed could face up to six years imprisonment if convicted of the charges against him.

The 32-year-old resident of Bukovina was arrested following detection that he installed malicious scripts created to commandeer the processing power of visitors to a network of websites.

These are sites covering various niches in education, literature and science. Through the action, he gained considerable user base and crypto mining capacity.

The installation of malicious codes on high traffic sites enabled him to make use of victim’s computing power to mine cryptocurrencies to his own wallet.

Increase in Cryptojacking

According to a report by Kaspersky labs, a cybersecurity firm, by 2018 cryptojacking related attacks had soared by 44 per cent.

A separate report says that approximately 4.3% of all Monero cryptocurrency had been mined through the same process making Monero (XMR) the main digital currency targeted by malicious miners due to it’s strong anonymity and being untraceable.

Reports said the suspect’s house was raided by the police who seized his hard drives, computers and bank cards.