Quote:Cryptocurrency miners that infect the computers of unsuspecting users essentially operate according to the same business model as ransomware programs: the victim’s computing power is harnessed to enrich the cybercriminals. Only in the case of miners, it might be quite a while before the user notices that 70–80% of their CPU or graphics card power is being used to generate virtual coins. Encrypted documents and ransomware messages are far harder to miss.

Cryptominers usually find their way onto user computers and corporate machines along with adware, hacked games, and other pirated content. What’s more, the present “entry threshold” — that is, the actual process of creating a miner — is rather low: cybercriminals are assisted by ready-to-use affiliate programs, open mining pools, and miner builders. If that weren’t enough, there is another way to steal computing resources through a webpage-embedded mining script that starts when the user opens the site in a browser.  A separate category of cybercriminals are those who target not private computers, but the servers of large companies, for which the infection process is considerably more resource-intense.

Trends

2018 began with a rise in the number of miner-related attacks. However, after a drop in the value of the main cryptocurrencies, which lasted from January to February, infection activity noticeably declined. General interest in cryptocurrencies also waned.  Yet the graph clearly shows that while the number of cryptominer attacks decreased, the threat is still current. As for how the November collapse in the Bitcoin exchange rate will affect the number of infections, time will tell.