This has become somewhat of a standard for cybercriminals like hackers or fishy websites to benefit from the users of the internet by using the performance that your computer can provide. Maybe you have heard about crypto-jacking somewhere, but if not, do not worry because this thread will explain what it is and how to prevent it.
Cryptojacking is the process where an unauthorized person is using someone else’s computer for mining cryptocurrency. This can be done by spreading malicious links or files to unexpected users or by having hidden scripts on websites that run these mining services off of your computer without you even knowing or giving consent to it.
Why Has Cryptojacking Become So Popular Nowadays?
With the rise of cryptocurrency more and more people get interested in easy ways how to obtain it and one of the ways how it is usually obtained without trading for it is by mining it. Since mining is a process that needs a powerful computer and can cause extra electricity expenses cyber criminals had to come up with a way how to exploit this system and make money off of other people. In the end, they had come up with the idea to infect computers with malware or website scripts that run mining processes on a victim’s computer without giving any benefit to the person whose PC is being used to obtain money.
There is only one answer to this and it is “YES!” Imagine having a huge amount of computing power for which you do not have to pay a single cent and earn up to thousands if not millions of dollars by just laying in your chair and waiting.
Research has found that there could be around 33’000 websites running mining scripts with a total estimated amount of users being around 1 billion per month. This means that they are mining cryptocurrency with the computational power of 1 billion computers which sounds insane.
In January, researchers announced that they had found a botnet that had infected nearly a million users from all around the region of Asia and by the end of the month had generated profit in the margins of $3.6 million by mining Monero.
How Exactly Does It Work?
There exist multiple ways how hackers could achieve their goal by getting your PC to mine cryptocurrency without you knowing about it, but there are only 2 primary ways how they do it.
The first would be to trick you into downloading mining scripts into your computer either by sending malicious emails or links. This link will send you to a website that will download the script to your computer without you knowing about it and every time when you will work on your PC the script will be mining cryptocurrency in the background without you even knowing about it.
The other way of getting your PC to mine cryptocurrency for them would be to inject the mining script into an advertisement or the website itself and once you visit the site it would initialize and start mining cryptocurrency. By using this method no actual code is being saved on your PC which makes it harder to detect by malware protection services.
Luckily this type of malware usually does not damage the victim’s PC but only slows down its performance of it depending on what rate the script is set to mine the cryptocurrency.
The biggest expenses could occur when you would want to get rid of malware or your system bricking after being under extensive synthetic loads.
How To Avoid Cryptojacking?
If you want to avoid your PC being used for cryptocurrency mining by hackers you should follow these steps:
- Learn about what processes get affected if you get targeted by crypto-jacking to be able to quickly identify the issue and get rid of it.
- Install plugins and add-ons to your browser that will protect you from potentially harmful pop-ups of websites trying to install or run crypto-jacking scripts.
- Use a verified anti-malware software that will be capable of detecting and preventing crypto-jacking from being made on your PC.
- Keep your system and software updated to the newest version to receive the newest bug fixes and preventative measures.
How To Detect If Your Computer Is Being Used For Cryptojacking?
If your anti-virus or anti-malware software failed to identify a threat then the first sign of your PC being used for Cryptojacking would be having abnormal usage of your CPU which you can check by opening the task manager and clicking show more detail. High usage of your CPU will cause your CPU to heat up and overall slow down the speed at which your computer operates.
What To Do In Case Of Cryptojacking?
In case when you already have identified that your PC is being used for crypto-jacking:
- Kill the website that is running the script and remove all the cookies and files that the website saved to your computer.
- Renew or Remove suspicious browser extensions and also update all existing ones to the newest version.
- Learn more about different types of crypto-jacking and adapt to the situation and respond to it.
