There’s a modern gold rush going on, and to cash in on it cyber miners are stealing your enterprise’s computing and networking resources, costing you time and money and putting your business at risk. They’re using your PCs, devices and bandwidth to mine cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Monero, making off with the proceeds and leaving you with the bill.
Let’s take a closer look at how cryptomining works and the dangers its poses.
In cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin or Monero, new coins can be created using tremendous amounts of CPU power. Individual computers can’t generate significant income this way. Essentially, fleets of CPUs are needed to create coins.
So cyber criminals have turned to hijacking PC CPUs to do coin mining. They do it in two ways: Downloading executable files onto PCs, which then use the PCs’ CPUs to do mining, or implanting scripts into people’s browsers which then use the CPUS to do mining. With just a few lines of code, cyber criminals can steal a PC’s processing power.