The lousy mining secret of online fraudsters

While Bitcoin owners are currently struggling to access their Bitcoin wallets, the security firm Avira Protection Labs speaks about a record of 53 percent increase in coinminer malware in Q4 2020 compared to Q3 2020. Plus, the price is per one Bitcoin with currently around 36,000 US dollars near an all-time high - with an upward trend. The Avira research team suspects a connection between the price increase and the increased crypto-malware activity.

“The rise in coinminer malware suggests that malware authors are taking advantage of the price trend of the last few months and increasing the spread of malware aimed at exploiting other people's computer resources for illegal mining activities. This correlation is not surprising, but is nonetheless worrying for legitimate miners and investors, ”said Alexander Vukcevic, Head of Avira Protection Labs.

Crypto-malware is secretly mining

Crypto malware (or coinminer malware) is one of the newer malware threats. Since this, unlike ransomware, does its work completely unnoticed on the computer, it is particularly insidious. The malware does not aim to steal data or blackmail the user, but rather to stay in the background for as long as possible and clandestinely mine. For this purpose, the malware uses part of the computer resources of the infected computer such as processor, graphics processor and main memory as well as the network bandwidth. The hijacking of computer resources is known as cryptojacking.

The three main types of coin miners include executable files (e.g. * .exe files), browser-based cryptocurrency miners, and advanced fileless miners - all of which have the ability to run on a variety of devices and systems.

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