Cryptocurrencies have been on a wild ride this year[1], and criminals are cashing in.
Thousands of people are being targeted by a kind of malware that harnesses a user’s computer power and uses it for mining cryptocurrencies, an attack called “cryptojacking.” Mining is the process of verifying transactions on the blockchain, the digital ledger on which cryptocurrencies are built. Solving the cryptography behind a transaction and verifying it releases a financial reward to the users who do it, incentivizing the mining process.
The hack causes minimal disruption for users, so it’s easy for hackers to take over a machine for months. If your smart TV isn’t running well, for instance, a cryptojacker could be to blame. Some people don’t know they are being targeted until they see they have unusually high electricity bills at the end of the month, said Martin Hron, a security researcher at Avast, a Prague-based computer security company.
It can be more obvious, though: In one experiment conducted by Avast, a cell phone’s plastic casing actually melted because it was being used to mine cryptocurrencies. Cryptojacking can significantly lower the lifespan of your devices, he said.
Some miners claim to make hundreds of dollars per day[2] doing relatively little work mining. Splitting up the mining work between many computers allows hackers to cash in on the rewards without monopolizing their own computer’s power, saving them on an electric bill. Mining is a power-heavy process that requires more power per year than the entire country of Denmark[3].
Hackers recently targeted websites
Hackers have recently exploited a vulnerability in content management systems[4] (the templates on which websites are built) that allowed to gain complete control of certain websites.
Drupal, the content management system that was exploited in this alleged attack, is used by 4.1% of websites, and hackers have infected about 1% of those with malicious content, according to Jessica Ortega, a researcher at website security provider SiteLock.
These hackers are most often harnessing computer power to mine Monero XMRUSD, -6.59%[5] , a cryptocurrency that’s popular with criminals [6]due to its anonymity and because it doesn’t require as much computer power as other currencies to mine, said Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra, a San Jose, California-based provider of automated threat management solutions. Bitcoin BTCUSD, -3.40%[7] is built on a public ledger,...