How to Prevent, Detect and Recover from Cryptojacking

Over the years, as crypto mining has become expensive but still lucrative, cryptojacking has become the latest threat facing virtual currency users. Your security training should include building awareness of what attacks look like, and particularly signs that an attacker might be trying to load malicious code. Even though cryptocurrency values have taken a massive hit recently, that hasn’t deterred cryptojacking criminals. SonicWall’s 2022 Cyber Threat Report found global cryptojacking attacks up 30% YoY to 66.7m in the first half of 2022.

As we saw above, crypto mining relies on the computation required for calculations to be extremely “expensive” in terms of computer resources. As with all computationally expensive computer tasks, the time to deliver a solution scales with the number of operations that can be performed per second. Within computing, scaling is described as being either vertical or horizontal. Without going into too much complexity, the cryptomining process essentially turns computing resources into cryptocurrency coins. And the more computing resources you have, the more cryptocurrency you can mine. Before long though, even the most high-end PCs with powerful processors couldn’t mine profitably enough to cover the costs.

Anti Malware & Anti Phishing

This operates without installing anything on the victim’s hard drive, making it more difficult to detect. An increase in Central Processing Unit usage or even devices shutting down because of a lack of how to prevent cryptojacking available processing power when on a website with little or no media content. Another cryptojacking botnet has been found to be targeting Microsoft Exchange servers in North America via ProxyLogon.

Over the next couple of days, Arc Systems will publish numerous ways you can help protect your networks, computers and data. Unfortunately, there isn’t one specific thing you can do to stop cryptojacking, but good security hygiene, in general, is always a https://www.tokenexus.com/ good line of defence. As pointed out by the Fortinet report, cryptojacking is classified as another form of malware. Normally, we suspect that a device might be infected with a virus when it starts to run slow or gets hot because the ventilation go off.

How do you know if you are a victim of cryptojacking?

Beyond this, successfully defending against cryptojacking relies on techniques used to protect against any other form of attack. If your employees bring their own devices to work, this can also be a source of infection when these devices use the same networks or are connected to internal systems. That being the case, be sure to use mobile device management software to manage what’s on them. Above all, keep the software up to date, including browser extensions and the apps on mobile devices.

This is especially true for anonymous cryptos such as Monero and Zcash, which makes it harder to trace cryptojacking activities. Cryptojacking might not get the same level of press attention as ransomware infection, but it’s still a clear and present threat. Taking steps to prevent it will help keep your computers healthy and avoid dropper malware exploiting them to install other even more damaging services. Microsoft has noticed an increase in the use of fileless malware for cryptojacking.

What is cryptojacking and how does it work?

Although termed “currency”, their use as legal tender in the traditional sense has been extremely limited and very much secondary to date to their use as a speculative asset for investment. Many cryptocurrencies are best viewed currently at least as a form of traded stock or investment scheme rather than a currency and are subject to significant volatility in value. The second method is to place a script on a website or an ad delivered to several websites. When a victim visits an affected website or clicks on an infected ad, the script automatically runs. Detecting cryptojacking can be difficult, even when many devices within your organization have been compromised.

Keep in mind that overheating doesn’t necessarily mean your device has been compromised. It can also be caused by unrelated issues such as a damaged fan or dust clog-up. So, ensure your device is always in good condition to make it easy to detect overheating caused by cryptojacking. Most of the cryptojacking is done using JavaScript miner, which is also used for legitimate mining. This means that a perpetrator doesn’t require high technical skills since the miner can easily be bought as a complete kit. What’s worse, it’s impossible to trace a miner to a particular hacker since the mining code doesn’t encrypt their data.

An Overview of Cryptomining

Security training involves building awareness of what cryptojacking attacks look like. This method works perfectly in a business or institutional setting where there are many employees, some of whom aren’t aware of cryptojacking. Its high-scale Public Key Infrastructure and identity solutions support the billions of services, devices, people and things comprising the Internet of Everything . Because cryptojacking attacks use very similar techniques used in more ‘traditional’ types of cybercrime, the methods to protect against them should already be familiar.

This includes all client-side JavaScript, allowing it to be evaluated and analysed. Our custom JavaScript Crypto Miner detection module works by loading each page within a sandboxed web browser and then detecting attempts by the browser to communicate with Crypto Mining services.

Author: Chaim Gartenberg