Hyderabad: Next time your computer or laptop or tablet or mobile phone gets loud, hot and slow, check if you are becoming a target of the new form of hacking called cryptojacking.
Even though you are careful not to download suspicious, malware-laden apps, you may be inadvertently mining crypto currency like Bitcoin if you are a victim of cryptojacking.
In the form of pop-up ads and emails, hackers are using your computer’s speed aka processing power for this kind of attack. There is a significant rise in malicious extensions appearing for browsers like Google Chrome, Mozzilla Firefox and Opera, among others.
Cybercriminals are known to target popular websites which lakhs of users visit every day. Frequent users of Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest will often see links containing malicious scripts.
Ads are all over the internet and through these ads, such cryptomining scripts can be added as well. Furthermore, a single webpage you visit can take up to 4.5 hours of your battery time if you keep the tab open.
These extensions or links, while providing some functionality, insert hidden crypto-currency mining scripts that run in the background without the user’s consent.
The mining scripts are not complicated but rather only have a couple of lines of malicious code. These hackers called coin-miners are using your computer’s CPU to earn money for someone else.
Sometimes, apart from overheating batteries, these scripts can make your devices unusable.
Cryptojacking is one of the most used attacker toolkits, indicating massive threat to cyber and personal security. Over the past few months, there has been a rise in malicious extensions that appear to provide useful functionality on the surface. As the ransomware market has become overpriced and overcrowded, Cyber criminals are rapidly adding cryptojacking to their armoury.
