There’s a new type of hacking attack to be concerned with, and it’s growing by leaps and bounds. Called “Crypto-Jacking,” it’s a process by which malicious code is placed on websites. When the sites are visited, the code secretly siphons off a portion of the affected user’s PC, laptop, or smartphone’s processing power and uses it to mine for various cryptocurrencies so that the hackers can profit from it.
Kevin Haley, the Director of Symantec’s Security Response Team, had this to say about the issue:
“Cryptojacking just came out of nowhere. I think what we’re going to learn in the year to come is when people see the opportunity to take money, they’re going to come up with some really wild ways to do that.”
Based on the statistics the company has been collecting, cryptojacking increased a whopping 8500 percent in the fourth quarter of 2017 alone. As the prices of various cryptocurrencies continue to rise, we can expect to see even more of this because it provides the hackers with a hands-free method of gaining tremendous profits with almost no risk or exposure.
Mike Fey, the President and COO of Symantec adds, “Cryptojacking is a rising threat to cyber and personal security. The massive profit incentive puts people, devices and organizations at risk of unauthorized coin miners siphoning resources from their systems, further motivating criminals to infiltrate everything from home PCs to giant data centers.”
Perhaps the most insidious aspect of this new attack vector is how easy it is to pull off. Even a low-skill hacker with a very limited toolset can manage to insert the handful of lines of code needed to begin siphoning resources.
Unlike most other forms of attack, however, no company data is directly at risk. What you can expect to see though, are serious performance hit as more of your equipment becomes infected. It’s not a happy situation given the importance of speed in today’s fast-paced business environment.
President & CEO
I hope you enjoyed this article. My mission is to take your stress away from dealing with IT problems. Call (252) 565-1235 or send me a message at our contact us page if you have a question, comment or want help.
If you are a fan of, and regularly use Goo.gl (the URL shortener service), brace for impact. The company has announced that as of March 30, 2019, the service will be shut down for good. Long before then, beginning April 18th of this year, only existing users will be able to shorten links via goo.gl. No new signups will be allowed.
Researchers at Preempt Security recently discovered a critical flaw in Microsoft’s Credential Security Support Provider protocol (CredSSP for short) that impacts every version of Windows in existence. It could allow a hacker to remotely exploit Windows Remote Desktop to execute malicious code and steal any data stored on the machine.
There’s a new threat on the horizon, according to security researchers from Check Point. A group of hackers in China are busy building a massive botnet that so far, totals almost five million Android smartphones. The hackers are quietly taking control of these devices using a strain of malware known as “RottenSys.”
Wearable computing devices from smart watches to glasses are struggling to find an audience, and Google’s Android Wear operating system hasn’t gotten much love in recent years. It has weakened as major players in the tech space have struggled to find a market for these products. On the face of it, these products would seem to be wildly popular, but still haven’t quite captured the imaginations of a critical mass of the consuming public.
By now, you’ve almost certainly heard of “Spectre,” one of two recently discovered security flaws that impact every chip made by Intel in the last ten years.
According to a Microsoft security researcher, a massive malware attack attempted to install a cryptocurrency mining software on more than 400,000 computers in less than twelve hours. The failed campaign is noteworthy because of the attack vector used. It was a supply chain attack implemented by compromising Bittorrent, a highly popular program used to share and download files.
