The growth trend of cryptocurrency values at the end of last year was followed by the number of digital currency mining attacks by hackers.
Symantec reported that computer hijacking activities to mine cryptocurrency, often called cryptojacking, increased 8,500% in Q4 2017. The rapid growth is due to the rise in the value of Bitcoin and other digital currencies last year.
Cryptojacking activities throughout December 2017 covered 24% of all online attacks that were successfully denied during that period. As for Q4 2017, 16% of all cyber attacks that were successfully blocked during this period were cryptojacking. If totaled, throughout 2017 cryptojacking grows by 34,000%, or 340 times, compared to 2016.
The last three months of last year did indeed become a golden period for cryptocurrency. Bitcoin even recorded the highest value, ie USD 19,771, in December 2017. Ethereum and Ripple also touched one of its longest value in the same period, with each reaching USD 876 and USD 2.79.
In addition to the rapid growth of cryptocurrency values at the end of last year, Symantec also reported that the increasing number of cryptojacking attacks was also caused by the easy operation of digital currency miner apps. In fact, also mentioned in the report, mine cryptocurrency from someone else's CPU is easier than installing a virus.
In addition to its ease, the effect that can not be known directly by the victim was one of the reasons why cryptojacking became the latest trend in cyber attacks.
"The theft of energy and other people's resources is very unpredictable, let alone monitored, making it difficult to detect infected computers cryptojacking," said Alex de Vries, founder of Digiconomist, a site that tracks the energy consumption of Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Even so, not the device that infected the attack showed no signs of weirdness. Usually, the device will experience a decrease in performance, the battery runs out faster than normal time, and excessive heat.
Cryptojacking was predicted will still be a cyber crime trends in some time to come. This was revealed by the Director of Security Response Symantec, Kevin Haley.
"Cyber crime will continue to exploit more resources for mining activities, and after the majority of cryptojacking is still struggling on PCs, Macs and smartphones, attackers are turning to larger energy sources to bring in more profits," he said.