A student from Louisiana State University (LSU) was arrested for allegedly installing malware on 169 devices in different university computer labs and then using them to mine cryptocurrency. The scheme had gone on for two years and earned the student over $2,500.
Carlos Munoz-Salazar, 25, was arrested after campus technology services found a USB drive he allegedly left connected to an infected computer. Arrest records state that the device was used to install malware on 169 different computers.
Munoz-Salazar was able to control all the infected units remotely, and he proceeded to install a program that allowed him to mine cryptocurrency on university computers.
Two-Year Scheme
LSU employees noticed that some computers had been infected since June 2018, and the malware persisted until the university’s IT department blocked the program on July 23, 2020.
A university employee used the USB to identify when he logged onto a different school computer last week. The employee took a photo of Munoz-Salazar’s school ID to identify him.
Upon his arrest last week, Munoz-Salazar admitted that he had earned $2,500 in virtual currency he had mined on the LSU computers. He was booked on 169 counts of computer tampering and fraud.