Cyber criminals began to use special programs to extract cryptocurrency on smartphones without the knowledge of device users.
A number of mobile games offer users at the start of the program to start extracting a cryptocurrency for the game developer, in turn, users are rewarded with a game currency for this. Malanov said that often such programs extract the Magi (XMG) cryptocurrency, which does not belong to the most popular cryptocurrency, its capitalization is about $ 3.3 million.
The expert of Kaspersky believes that such programs cannot be unambiguously called malicious, as users run them of their own free will, although Malanov notes that most of them do not realize that such programs make the smartphone work for wear.
Analysts of Trend Micro's antivirus company agree with a colleague from Kaspersky Lab that programs of this type wear out the device and shorten the battery life. According to the company, a number of software-miners can be found in the app store Google Play.
Sergei Nikitin, the representative of Group-IB, recalls that now, program-miners are banned in official application stores, so their developers often disguise software for entertainment programs in order to obtain cryptocurrency without the knowledge of smartphone owners. Hidden mining most of all concerns users of devices on Android OS, as it can download unverified applications.
Specialist of the Department of Security Analysis of Digital Security Alexey Pertsev suggests users prevent infection of their gadgets pay attention to the authors of the installed programs, the number of downloads, permissions that request the application and read comments from other users.