
Li Jun confessed to writing and selling the worm to 12 other criminals for more than 100,000 yuan (A$15,337 and was sentenced to four years in prison by a court in the Chinese city of Xiantao.
Three other defendants were sentenced to between one and two and a half years in jail for their involvement in the scam.
"We've noted that a surprising proportion of malware written in China is designed to steal credentials from users of multi-player online role-playing games,” said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos, in a statement.
According to a Sophos report more than half the malware written in China last year was designed to steal passwords.