The Three Largest Cybersecurity Threats Are Related To Crypto Miners

According to a recent report released by ZDNet, the three most prevalent threats that spread on internet are related to crypto miners. As per the cybersecurity group Check Point, the Monero-mining script CoinHive is the most popular of these threats. Coinhive has been selected as the most pressing malware hazard for the thirteenth month in a row.

The second most prevalent was XMRig and the third one was the crypto miner JSECoin. Check Point informs that CoinHive has reached 12 percent of organizations around the world, while the other malware reached 8 and 7 percent respectively.

CoinHive and JSECoin allow users to place a code that will be using visitors’ computing power to mine Monero (XMR). Monero is a very useful cryptocurrency to perform these attacks since it can be mined with GPU or CPU power that the visitors are not using.

There are several organizations and websites that are using Coinhive to convert the computing power of visitors into charitable donations. However, hackers were able to exploit this software and force around 400,000 CPUs to mine Monero for them, according to a report from The Next Web.

Academics from the German RWTH Aachen University explained that the script was responsible for generating around $250,000 per month, making reference to CoinHive. As per researchers from the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid and King’s College London, 4.32% of all Monero has been mined using crypto mining malware since 2007.

There were other ways of installing this malware. Users downloaded an infected file that started to mine Monero using their CPU power without even being in a specific website infected with these CoinHive injections.

Monero (XMR) is one of the most popular digital currencies in the market since it offers enhanced privacy for users.

171 +