13th April, 2018
2 Min read
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The rise of cryptocurrency value has resulted in malicious actors doing whatever it takes to achieve capital gain. Spreading coin mining malware is one of the ways cybercriminals are trying to gain the system – and your data could be at risk.
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Cryptocurrency mining refers to the practice of using computer hardware to “mine” cryptucurrency like Bitcoin. It usually requires a lot of processing power, and it uses up large amounts of electricity.
The term “coin mining malware” refersr to malware that malicious actors use to install coin miners onto users’ systems. This enables them to utilize the compromised systems’ computing resources for their own financial gain. Coin-mining malware has had a lot of media coverage in recent months, but it has roots dating back to 2011.
It works by infecting computers and using their processing power to mine cryptocurrency tokens. This means that the infected device/computer slows down to the point where it is unusable.
Akamai, one of the world’s leading CDN providers, has been developing various forms of threat mitigation over the last several years, and has built out an entire threat research team to study the behavior of these hazards, in addition to take an algorithmic approach to identifying the anomalies in behavior for various DNS lookups.
Coin mining malware drop sites domains to Akamai’s threat list and will continue to track new domains as they are uncovered. The intent here is to provide an additional layer of protection against malware such as coin mining.
Read more: Akamai Blog