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In what should be a shock to absolutely no one, cryptocurrency malware skyrocketed in 2018. What is Surprisingly, however, is how much it has increased by 4,000 percent, according to a new security report released by McAfee.
"The malware cryptocurrency is one of the great stories of 2018. Total malware of" tokens "has grown by over 4,000% in the last year," said McAfee (PDF).
This type of malware was practically non-existent for much of 2017. Since cryptocurrency mining has become more widespread, even the spread of malware trying to tap other people's system resources without their permission has increased rapidly. It was not just about Windows PCs.
"Security researcher Remco Verhoef has discovered a threat to Mac OS later named OSX.Dummy, which has been deployed on cryptographic chat groups, exploitation is simple and requires victims to execute a one-line command in the OSX terminal for download and execute the payload ", states the report.
"Cryptominers will benefit from any reliable scenario. Security researchers have found that unofficial repositories of the open source media player Kodi have provided a modified add-on that provides cryptominer malware, which began in 2017," the report added.
Crypto-malware has also targeted wireless routers and IoT devices. Low-power gadgets do not have much to spend on computing, but the numbers are strong, and this is what malware authors had in mind.
We suspect that in 2019 there will be a strong decline in the extraction of cryptocurrencies. I mean, unless there's another wave. Hopefully this does not happen though – the extraction of cryptocurrencies has been a scourge for many players last year, as it has contributed to a shortage of graphics cards and inflated prices. It was not the only factor that contributed to the assessment of memory, but it was certainly a factor.
Interestingly, McAfee has observed a decline in ransomware, a type of malware that encrypts a person's hard drive and threatens to permanently delete content unless the target pays for a ransom, often in Bitcoin. McAfee speculates that digital criminals have switched to the most profitable business model of malware distribution for cryptocurrency miners.
