What Is Cryptojacking?
What Is Cryptojacking?
Cryptojacking is the unauthorized access of your device to secretly mine cryptocurrency by using your computer processing power and bandwidth.
The main motive of the cryptojacking attack is to earn money from mining cryptocurrency by breaking into multiple devices.
Cryptojacking may be achieved by clicking on malicious links or email attachments and by installing the malicious software by victims targets.
The modern way of cryptojacking is to use a script which runs in victims browser secretly and will use the processing power and bandwidth of the device. This is known as web-based cryptojacking.
How Does Cryptojacking Work?
There are two most popular ways used by hackers to perform cryptojacking attack:
Malware scripts
In this method, a user downloads a file by clicking on a link that contains the malware. Then the malware program installed the code running into your computer secretly to start cryptocurrency mining.
Mostly these programs do not harm your devices and also ignored by anti-virus software.
These malware programs will take over on your computer to use your device processing power and bandwidth.
In-Browser JavaScript code
In this method, attackers used the malicious JavaScript code embedded into the web page to mine cryptocurrency.
If someone visits that page will be cryptojacked and that machine will start mining cryptocurrency for attackers.
There will be no need of installation, the user has to need just browse the web page containing malicious JavaScript code.
All users around the world that visit on the web page will be cryptojacked and their device will be used by attackers to mine cryptocurrency.
It is the most powerful cryptojacking attack as it is very easy to implement and difficult to detect.
How to detect and prevent cryptojacking attacks?
- Check your computer device that it is working fine or not, as in case of cryptojacking your computer processing will slow down due to abnormal use of CPU and cooling fans start making noise.
- Your browser will slow down and act differently in the case of web-based cryptojacking.
- Install popular browser extensions like NoCoin, MinerBlock, and Adblocker to stop the web-based cryptojacking attack.
- Avoid clicking on the unwanted links and do not download the unknown files and attachments.
- Use the reputed Anti-malware and anti-virus software applications which will protect your system from all types of malware attacks.
