Who do you Mine for?As Bitcoin grows in popularity each day, its no surprise that hackers are starting to catch on. Most people will share the same fears, losing their wallet to a hacked computer, forgetting their blockchain password or even, the dreaded crash of Bitcoin, potentially leaving many thousands out of pocket.
But there is something you may not know. Among the darker sides of the internet, geeks and hackers join together to talk, trade and share programs theyve built. Some of these programs are quite harmless, auto traders and gatherers for the mmorpg Runescape or IP scramblers for anonymity while online.
Among these programs, there are Bitcoin and Litecoin miners designed to silently mine on infected computers. These pose as a serious threat to anyone Bitcoin follower or not, often praying on casual computer users with little to no computing experience, the miner will lay dormant until activated by the hacker, when in use it will run, using as much processing power as possible, to mine for the infector.
Infected computers are often known as bots, hackers will build up a collection of vulnerable computers of which they have infected, to run their custom built programs, using corrupt miners to generate income at your expense. Not only do the miners generate cash flow for the hackers but the naturally high energy usage of the miners can also incur hefty electricity bills for the infected computers owner, not to mention the damage excessive processes can cause to dated machines.
It is impossible to say for sure how much influence these infected machines have on the Bitcoin network, many thousands of the miners in pools may well be infected machines, generating a steady income for cyber criminals. Fortunately thanks to the invention of ASIC chips and the steady deployment of them across the world, it seems unlikely these hackers will ever be able to manipulate the network.
But please heed my warning, especially if you are an investor in Bitcoin;
- Run a regular anti-virus scan on your computer and keep the software up to date!
- Never download programs that you do not trust, ever. You never know what youre downloading
- If you hold Bitcoin locally on your computer encrypt the wallet, keep it safe
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