Crypto jacking a bigger threat than ransomeware

[r32godzilla]

Nowadays crypto jacking,i.e.,illicit crypto mining by using a person's Computer without his concent has become more popular among cybercriminals than ransomeware.

Crypto miners nowadays account for 32percent of cyber attacks in comparison to ransomeware attack which is now just 8 percent.

Cybercriminals have found crypto jacking to be a safe haven as they could not be traced easily here.

https://www.coindesk.com/cryptojacking-now-a-bigger-threat-than-ransomware-says-report

[Pan Troglodytes]

Yes, for instance there is this site "segwit checker" (which checks if the address provided is SegWit or not - you need to analyse the outgoing transaction script to know for sure), I am not providing the address here on purpose.

I believe that they mine something in your browser because there is this slider that needs to reload and it takes considerable time for it to reload in full. And there is really objectively nothing that can require those lengthy computations (other than hijacking your computing power for a moment).

On the other hand, one may consider that payment for the service, if it were only openly announced what they do behind that slider.

[Aleksandr_ov]

everyone gets what they do and if you did not invest anything and ask for your share or want control, then it's already called selling air, you have to buy everything for everyone

[aleksej996]

I don't know if you can call it a bigger threat just because it is more widespread.
When you lose data in a ransomware attack, you can not recover without paying.
If you have your CPU hijacked you can always make a backup of your data and reinstall the OS.

I would say ransomware is still a bigger threat, since you have to take severity of an attack into account.

[dothebeats]

It will be good if the site will be upfront in saying that they use a system that momentarily uses our computing power whenever we're on their site in replacement for annoying ads that usually take up much of the space of the website UI. Unfortunately, most of these websites inject these malware into our systems without even telling us about it. I had an issue once that an 'unknown process' is eating up 97% of my GPU's performance for 30 minutes, on idle mode. Turns out it was a mining software embedded in one of the files I needed for a USB microscope (lol beware guys). From then on, I always check sources, see what's in the package before I install anything on my machine.

[aleksej996]

It will be good if the site will be upfront in saying that they use a system that momentarily uses our computing power whenever we're on their site in replacement for annoying ads that usually take up much of the space of the website UI. Unfortunately, most of these websites inject these malware into our systems without even telling us about it. I had an issue once that an 'unknown process' is eating up 97% of my GPU's performance for 30 minutes, on idle mode. Turns out it was a mining software embedded in one of the files I needed for a USB microscope (lol beware guys). From then on, I always check sources, see what's in the package before I install anything on my machine.

As I am aware most modern versions of browsers try to block some of those well-known mining scripts.
It is only those that ask for the permission from the user that they don't automatically block.