When Dealing With Cryptocurrency, Beware of Cybercriminals

Cryptocurrencies are one of the most popular uses of blockchain technology; although their values seem to have decreased a little since the volatile growth they experienced a few months ago, that has not stopped people from seeking them out. Naturally, where there’s money to be made, there's going to be cybercriminals nearby.

This shouldn't surprise anyone. Cryptocurrencies are perfect for cybercriminals, mostly because of their high values and equally high levels of anonymity. Nonetheless, mining even the smallest amount via legitimate means is an expensive and lengthy process that requires specialized computer hardware and considerable amounts of electrical power.

The result has been a rise in a new threat to users: crypto jacking. Malware will infect a user’s device and hide in the background, leeching off of the host computer’s resources to mine for cryptocurrency. This causes the exact side effects that you would expect: increased electric bills and hindered performance for the user, with an increased rate of wear on their computer components. To make matters worse, this malware requires only a compromised website to be visited for the malware to work; while this once meant that the malware would only work as long as the unwitting host was on the website, cybercriminals have found a way to work around that. Some infected sites will create a pop-up that hides behind the computer’s taskbar, unnoticed, and continues to eat up resources for the cybercriminal’s profit.

In addition to malware downloads, crypto-miners are usually spread through hidden code on the websites themselves, as well as untrustworthy browser extensions. This variety of malware has been discovered in the websites for the United States Courts, the United Kingdom’s National Health Service, and the Australian state governments of Victoria and Queensland. It was located in a text-to-speech and translation plugin used on those sites. The developer of the plugin removed it from all websites immediately.

Business owners must pay close attention to these events because they could easily have a direct effect on business operations. Moreover, mining cryptocurrency is no easy task for any hardware; it shortens the life of the machine and the components inside. This ultimately means that you will also be on the hook to replace that hardware sooner, costing your organization even more.

But not all hope is lost. Many browsers are incorporating anti-cryptocurrency measures, and some antivirus programs can block crypto jacking attempts. There are also extensions available for some browsers that help to stop cryptomining and crypto jacking scripts.

At Macro Systems, our priority is to keep your IT running efficiently. This includes preventing threats and malware. Give us a call at 703-359-9211 to find out what we can do for you.