Hackers are lurking everywhere looking for an opportunity to devour. The new scam is town will not make you lose your cash or precious credit card details. They are now after your processing power. Hackers are now installing a malicious code on the computers of unsuspecting people. The code will run on your computer, utilizing its processing power to mine the crypto-currencies. The more computers that they get to join the network to mine the currency, the more profits that they are bound to make.
A recent scan of the most visited websites found out that many of them were harboring this malicious code. Trend Micro’s vice-president of security research, Rik Ferguson backs up this research by stating that the new trend is about numbers. That is, the more computers you have mining for you the more likely you are to make more money.
It’s because the concept behind the crypto-currencies is getting many computers to work together and solve complex mathematical problems. The results help them to come up with a ledger which is digital. It is this ledger that the experts refer to as the block-chain. Another definition of the block-chain is determining the spending activity of a particular coin.
Mining is the technical term that refers to the solving of these complex mathematical problems. The miners who find the solutions to the mathematical problems get new coins. It’s the reward that is making hackers to come and steal your processing power. It’s because when they have many computers working to solve this problem the more likely they are to get the solutions and earn the reward.
The research found that some of the websites had incorporated the malicious code knowingly. It’s because of the way that they had concealed the code. However, for some websites, they were not aware that the code was present in their script. Also, they didn’t know who might have added it there. After getting the information about the presence of the code they moved to delete it. They also updated their security policies to avoid any future occurrences and opened an investigation to determine how the code got there.
Some researchers in Illinois are working on a monitoring system that will help determine if your computer is infected. It will be easy for the system because of the way processing of the crypto-currency’s mathematics takes place.
