4000% Increase in Crypto Mining Malware by Hackers

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Rise In Cryptojaking and Cryptominers

Cryptocurrency hackers were very busy during 2018 with the launching of ransomware attacks at companies, government bodies and individuals around the globe.

As the price of digital tokens declined throughout the year 2018, hackers set their eyes on a far better payload called as crypto mining malware.

According to December’s cybersecurity reports, there is a rise in the attack of coinmining malware by 4,000%. In the last quarter of  2017, there were 500,000 new coin miner malware that jumped to 4 million by the end of the third quarter of this year.

A hacker basically accesses someone’s computer without taking their permission. If the hacker mine in for digital tokens, it is called cryptomining. Hackers infiltrate a computer after tricking a user into clicking on a malicious attachment or link in the email.

Otherwise, they infect a website on their browser to gain access. Hackers also use crypto mining chat groups to distribute cryptomining malware.

Users of Slack, Telegram, etc. have noticed few such crypto issues. Once the malware is downloaded, the code starts infecting the user’s device.

Till July 2018, several security companies has blocked around 5 million cryptojacking events, thus saving the life of several computers.

The impact of crypto miners like CoinHive, DarkGate, WebCobratypically slows down the device, batteries, cause overheating, increases the energy consumption while making computer useless.

Such computers, later on, become the roots of cryptomining whose control is among the hackers.

While targeting computers, some scammers also took advantage of the internet connected devices such as routers that were compromised due to digital token miners.

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It is nearly impossible to think routers, IoT devices like IP cameras and video recorders for cryptomining because their CPUs are not that much powerful like in desktop and laptop computers.

However, due to the lack of security controls, cybercriminals get benefit from the volume as compared to CPU speed. If they can control hundreds of thousands of devices for a long time, they are able to make money.

The idea behind targeting such IoT devices is that hackers easily create a mining device. As compared to the first and second quarter IoT devices has jumped to 72% in the third quarter of 2018.

In the past four quarters of  2018, total cryptojacking malware grew by 203%.

The rise in crypto mining malware this year displaced many ransomware that was a huge story in 2017 as the bitcoins and other digital token prices fell.

A ransomware attack may yield a hacker more money in the less time but the victim soon becomes aware very soon.

While the crypto mining malware is very attractive because it goes undetected for a very long time but does take a longer time to make money.

As the quarter 4 of 2018 has end and 2019 is on start, we can expect more attacks of crypto miners giving rise to ransomware and cryptojacking.

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