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.
