Cryptojacking is the most popular type of cryptocurrency-related malware at the moment and cyber security firms say it has surged in use over the past year. It is so insidious that victims are often unaware that their computers have been infiltrated and are being used to mine coins.
Even you may be under attack at this very moment.
Despite the bear market and serious drop in crypto prices
Detections of the malware have surged almost 500% compared to 2017. Maybe the pirates aren’t making enough money with honest trading anymore and so have reverted to criminal behaviour. Their favourite coins are ironically the privacy coins, the topmost being Monero. In fact almost 5% of all Monero mined – around $60 million worth at current prices – has been mined illegally by malware. What makes it so easy for the pirates is the range of programmes that are ready to use, and even worse, the open mining pools.
They are like a public swimming pool where water-borne diseases can pass from one person to the other without a trace. You need to be really careful of those troughs of trouble.
They are a scam waiting to happen.
Sometimes these pirates are hiding in plain sight
Or they just have a wicked sense of humour. For example, one of the latest cryptojacks comes via the file sharing torrent site The Pirate Bay. How’s that for hiding in plain sight. And the joke gets more absurd. The movie used to insert the malware into the unsuspecting downloader’s computer is called The Girl in the Spider’s Web. You may not know it but this movie is basically a remake of the mid-nineties cult classic called…“Hackers”. Yes that’s right it’s hiding in plain sight. You just need the right vision - informed by knowledge, obviously.
The plot is about a woman who performs a genius hack to free an NSA agent to get him to work with her.
The malicious code hidden in the movie download performs multiple actions. At first it was simply thought to inject ads on Google search results to show certain suspect links first. It also placed fake banners on Wikipedia, inviting users to transfer BTC and ETH to them as if they were actually asking for crypto donations. Any donations then went to the pirate’s address instead.
But the really bad part of the malware is
That it’s able to swap out wallet addresses and replace them with those of the pirates themselves. Because our wallet address is such a long jumbled mix of letters and numbers, most of us probably copy and paste it into the browser when we wish to use it. It is at this point that the malware replaces another address, and many simply don’t notice the difference.
I mean who actually remembers their 24 or 48 digit wallet address?
So as you transfer your crypto, it goes to the pirate address and not to yours.
Fortunately the Israeli cyber security firm Check Point
Has discovered this and made the world aware of it. They provide software technology for governments as well as over 1000 other organizations. They report that the top three most prolific malware strains are all cryptojacking types. And the one called “Coinhive” is the leading culprit for over a year now, mining all the illegal Monero on unsuspecting victims’ computers. It’s so bad that Coinhive has affected about 12% of organizations worldwide so far. In close second is the malware “XMRig” with 8% penetration and “Jsecoin” at 7%.
The Russian cyber security firm Kaspersky Labs
Is also aware of the phenomena of course and have published an analysis on it too, saying it remains a constant threat, so please be aware crypto enthusiasts. With even more irony it turns out that originally this kind of malware was first stolen by hackers called the Shadow Brokers from the NSA, America’s top spy and security agency. One malware called “Eternal Blue” was famous for the WannaCry” cyber attack and since 2017 it continues to cause trouble up until today.
According the Cyber Threat Alliance
Even smart phones are vulnerable to this kind of attack and hackers or cryptojackers are only becoming more sophisticated with time. They have been around significantly since 2013 but became really prolific since 2017. For example even CozyBear (aka CozyDuke, CozyCar, Grizzly Bear, APT29) is a hacker group still around since 2015, causing trouble. It probably seems obvious by now that we should just avoid torrent sites or file sharing sites like The Pirate Bay altogether.
If you associate with pirates you may just catch their viruses.
Especially if you use Windows, but apparently even Linux, which is supposed to be failsafe, is also vulnerable. Either that or get yourself some excellent firewalls, security software or further education in the cyber industry. Cyber crime is the new frontier of pirates as well as the field on which WW3 is currently being waged.
Don’t become collateral damage in the fallout between superpowers vying for domination of planet earth at the moment.
The cyber security firm Talos discovered
The pirate group called “Rocke” last year, which not only bypasses your firewall, but it then puts up another firewall to block any other cryptojackers from entering, particularly on Linux. Even cloud computing and storing is totally vulnerable, much like mining pools. And Chinese internet giants like Tencent and Alibaba (surrounded by 40 thieves) are victims too.
“This evolution indicates that attackers who are compromising hosts operating in cloud platforms are now attempting to evade security products that are specific to those platforms.”
Ryan Olson, vice president for threat intelligence at Palo Alto Networks
It will help to keep your software updated apparently
Since many hackers use vulnerabilities in older versions of software, like Apache Struts 2, Oracle WebLogic and Adobe ColdFusion. And while other cyber security firms say cryptojacking has increased over 400%, McAfee Labs reckons it’s an increase of 4000% in 2018. Stats revealed that 415 000 MikroTik routers have been affected in 2018, double the amount since the previous year.
Ultimately it’s difficult to tell
Just who are the white hats and who are the black hats in the cyberspace we all inhabit nowadays, so better to be safe than sorry, put security first, and remember the old saying, trust in God but keep your doors locked. There could be a “CozyBear” at your door as we speak. If so then just booby trap that bad boy with a shortcut file so it drops the payload. “Smart Monitoring” will weaken any PowerShell command or malicious programme like the one called “Razy” discovered just last month by Kaspersky Lab. We have the tools to defend ourselves, and the security tech support, so soldier on fellow comrades in cyberspace.
Our battle has just begun.
PROTECT YOUR PC FROM BROWSER MINING WITH NOCOIN BROWSER EXTENSION!
Read up on other ways to protect your PC: 7 Easy Ways To Block Cryptocurrency Mining In Your Web Browser
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