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Cybersecurity Good News - Bitcoin Miners

cybersecurity malware

What? Actual good news about cybersecurity threats? Yes!

Cryptojacking is a money-making scheme that uses your computer to mine bitcoins. The bitcoin miners don't steal money from you. Instead, they steal resources from your computer to create bitcoins.

As of 4/15/2019, a bitcoin was worth $5045, a strong incentive for cryptojackers.

Cryptojackers

Your computer can be cryptojacked if you click a link in a spam email or visit an infected website. Mining software running on your machine and thousands of others slowly produces bitcoins.

The good news is that a major bitcoin mining service, CoinHive, shut down in March 2019. Now the earlier predictions of upward growth in cryptojacking have been reversed, at least for home users.
Malwarebytes article (PDF)

On the other hand, cryptojacking attacks against "enterprises" are increasing according to Symantec, makers of Norton Antivirus. https://www.symantec.com/blogs/feature-stories/cryptojacking-fluctuates-along-cryptocurrency-values

The jackers target enterprises with cryptomining programs that can spread across company networks infecting user computers as they go. As a result, they reap more money from a successful attack on a single careless user.

Good defensive measures include educating users not to click on spam emails, applying operating system patches (Windows Updates) and running automatic cloud backups.



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