Viruses that produce cryptocurrencies are increasing without users' knowledge:
30 June 2018 - The world's most famous cryptocurrencies are always at the center of attention. And if only a few weeks ago, a hacker attack had caused the worst drop in the
last month of Bitcoin, now we are witnessing a surge of viruses in order to produce them..The data comes from the security experts of Kaspersky Lab and McAfeeand are not very encouraging.
"The number of users who have suffered an attack by malicious software for the production," mining ", of cryptocurrencies has grown - says Kaspersky Lab - from 1.9 to 2.7 million in a single year (+44, 5%). " Otherwise, the number of users who came across a ransomware fell 30%, so much so that "we went from 2,581,026 in the two-year period 2016-2017 to 1,811,937 in 2017-2018". According to industry experts, the explanation would lie in the fact that mining is a simpler method to implement , unlike ransomware that requires more effort and risk.
Cryptominer : this is the name of the software that attack computers, but also smartphones and exploiting their computing power, they produce Bitcoin without the user noticing it .
The McAfee security company on its side, confirms that there was a 629% increase in the first quarter of 2018, when it comes to the number of malware used to extract electronic money . In the fourth quarter of 2017 there were about 400,000 known samples, which became 2.9 million in the following quarter. All this proves that hackers are looking for easier ways to infect users' computer systems in order to collect payments that do not involve other steps to monetize.
This is a mechanism that has already taken hold and is increasingly following the market trend : "with the increase in the value of cryptocurrencies - explains Steve Grobman of McAfee - the market trend pushes criminals towards cryptojacking and cryptocurrency theft.Cybercrime is an economic activity and it will always be the trend of the market to indicate where the adversaries will concentrate their efforts ".