Cryptojacking has turned into the hottest malware trend of the recent days. Hackers don’t need to break into your bank account. Instead, they can simply use your PC to make money. You pay for the energy consumption and hackers get their money free of charge. After emerging, lots of security software (antivirus, ad blockers, browser extensions etc.) are now able to detect and block cryptojacking scripts. The miner was previously loaded as JavaScript codes associated with cryptojacking servers.

Hackers now have found ways to work around the blocking and mine freely. Using proxy servers, crooks are now able to inject the mining code into your browser.

Proxy servers helping to evade detection

The most widespread and popular method of such workaround is deploying a “cryptojacking proxy server”. There’s an example available on GitHub, named CoinHive Stratum Mining Proxy.

These proxies allow the hackers to host the mining codes on their server (instead of CoinHive, DeepMiner, CryptoLoot servers) and load them as an anonymous JavaScript code. As you guessed, these servers are blocked by security programs by default.

Secondly, the proxies let the hackers to utilize a custom mining pool, featuring to detach the mining process from the parent cryptojacking service. For example, this ability ensures no fee payment to CoinHive.

Due to all these facilities, hackers are currently tending to use them as a defensive layer for their miners. Two security vendor company – Malwarebytes and Sucuri – have been tracking such attacks in the recent months.

The only way to identify the illegal mining is to check your system’s performance. If the CPU or GPU usage is pretty high, that means that a cryptojacking process is running. You can use Task Manager (on Windows) or System Monitor (on Linux) or any similar programs to check out the CPU usage regularly for any suspicious activity.

Hackers currently succeeded in earning $75,000 from a new campaign discovered recently. Learn more about how hackers earned the money using a 5-years-old exploit.

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What is cryptocurrency mining

Before you understand how serious this issue is, you have to realize how cryptocurrency works. Let’s start with Bitcoin, the most popular cryptocurrency of all. The total possible number of available Bitcoin is 21 million – nothing more. But not all the coins currently exist – they have to be mined by solving different math puzzles with the help of computers. This method requires a huge hardware resource to calculate and solve all the puzzles. The solver gets Bitcoin as a reward. Mining requires an algorithm and a computer to run the algorithm.

Websites now use your web browser to run that algorithm and your hardware to perform the heavy job. This process is called “cryptojacking”. Many websites are using this method to earn some extra money. The perfect example is CoinHive. It uses a JavaScript tool to mine on your browser.

Cryptojacking

Why is cryptojacking bad? Well, it’s a controversial topic. Some think it’s okay, some think it’s bad. However, it’s a bad trait overall. Normally, cryptocurrency mining methods are HEAVILY resource-hungry. It forces your processor to work on overload and using more power. This overload work is dangerous for hardware like CPU – the more work, the more heat generation that gradually leads to permanent damage. Moreover, when browsing the website, your other works will become very slow as your CPU is busy in mining.

There are different websites that use such mining tool on their website. For example, The Pirate Bay (caution – it’s a torrent website with illegal content) is a torrent site. They integrated the CoinHive JavaScript to run in the web browsers of its viewers. They claim that it’s their alternative method to earn some extra money instead of showing the annoying ads. It’s the first popular website that took this measure.

Why would you burn your PC? There’s no need for such an overload on your computer. Cryptocurrency mining is so resource-hungry that there are numerous different mining hardware available that are specially designed for mining. PC is never a suitable solution for mining.

How to stay secured

By far, CoinHive is the most popular miner that websites use. However, other mining tools are always floating in websites. For blocking such heinous tools, you can use several methods.

• Install Adblock – It’s one of the most popular extensions for all the browsers. There’s a default cryptocurrency blocking method available. The extension is available for Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Safari, and Edge. Get Adblock.
• Use a security solution – Security vendors are always checking the web for cyber issues. By default, a security software will block the mining tool from the web. CoinHive successfully fooled a few security software, but all the companies are always evolving to defend the latest threats. Check out the top 10 security solutions.
• Block CoinHive – CoinHive is the most popular one in such actions. The file that is used can be blocked using custom filters. Block “coin-hive.com/lib/coinhive.min.js” using Adblock Plus.

The bottom line

Fortunately, the tool doesn’t steal sensitive info. Recently, other malicious miner tools are affecting PCs. Zealot is one of them. Learn more how to stay protected from Zealot.

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