Beware of the CoinHive Cryptocurrency Miner!

Alongside the rise of cryptocurrencies, hackers tried as much as possible to make other people mine for them, but without their agreement. Therefore, a lot of viruses were developed, some of them being way more dangerous than you can think.

According to CoinDesk, citing a report from cyber-security solutions provider Check Point Software, the threat from cryptocurrency mining malware is growing more and more rapidly.

Hackers are apparently very fond of it

The company just released a new Global Threat Impact Index report and it looks like last month, the CoinHive variant was the sixth most-used malware.

Specifically, CoinHive is a complex JavaScript program that runs unseen on various websites and it works by using the processing power of visitors’ PC to mine cryptocurrency.

CheckPoint, through threat intelligence group manager Maya Horowitz, released a press release, claiming that the current situation and the emergence of malware able to mine crypto reveals once again the “need for advanced threat prevention technologies”, in order to keep Internet users safe against such practices, as well as protect networks from cyber-criminals.

Earlier in October, for example, political fact-checking site Politifact.com was one of those affected, as Coinhive scripts were found on it, in a way that consumed 100 percent of visitors computing resources. Apparently, “an unidentified hacker attached a crypto mining script to the PolitiFact code base being stored on a cloud-based server,” according to the website’s representatives.

The threat could become bigger and bigger

“Crypto mining is a new, silent, yet significant actor in the threat landscape, allowing threat actors to make significant revenues while victims’ endpoints and networks suffer from latency and decreased performance,” she added.

As for the rest of October’s top, it was topped by malware variant RoughTed (adware), followed by ransomware Locky and a traffic redirection malware, known as Seamless.

Recently, Cloudflare suspended all websites which were found running hidden cryptocurrency miners, influding torrent site operator ProxyBunker.