Crypto Mining Up 8,500% last year: report

According to the Symantec security company, cryptocurrency mining was the biggest trend of 2017. "The increase in interest in this area was such that the detection of tokens in endpoint computers increased by 39; 8.500%, "wrote the antivirus software producer in a blog post on his site. (See also: What is Bitcoin Mining?)

The scorers are scripts to generate new coins. Typically, they are performed on nodes connected to computer networks responsible for this activity. These are known as bitcoin coal mines. Some individuals also manage bitcoin mining machines at home. The statistics of Symantec concern the extraction of cryptocurrencies on these systems. When cryptocurrencies have become popular in the last year, bad actors in the cryptocurrency ecosystem have started using the script on my computers without their permission. For example, a malware used to generate Monero, which is the most popular cryptocurrency used to extract coins on users' computers, has also made profits last year.

However, not all instances of using the token algorithm are illegal. The online publication Salon presented this year a program that used coin-mining to help offset the advertising revenue deficit. The task of publishing for users was to present coin-mining as an alternative to advertising blocking software, which has become popular among users in recent years. But it is not clear whether the initiative was a success. Coins mining is a CPU-intensive activity that slows systems down and could even block them. (See also: Sites now use your computers to extract coins. It could be a good thing.)

The Symantec post has drawn attention to the consequences of the tokens for organizations. According to the company, self-propagating chisels or coin-mining algorithms that spread through a network by replicating on users' machines could shut down corporate networks. If most of the network is cloud-based, it could increase overall electrical usage (due to CPU-intensive activity) and increase overall maintenance costs for organizations.

The authors of the post also highlighted the consequences of the coinminer algorithms on IoT devices. "We have seen a 600% increase in total attacks on IoT devices in 2017, showing that while they are not making news as they did thanks to the Mirai botnet in 2016, they are still very much a target for cybercriminals," the states report.

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