"On Android devices, the computational load can even lead to 'bloating' of the battery and thus to physical damage to, or destruction of, the device," said ESET. "On mobiles the processing power available to criminals is less," but "there is a lot more of these devices, and therefore taking in total, they offer a greater potential," he added.īut for smartphone owners, the mining is at best a nuisance, slowing down the operation of the phone and making it warm to the touch as the processor struggles to unlock cryptocurrency and accomplish other tasks. "More and more mobile applications hiding Trojan horses associated to a cryptocurrency mining programme have appeared on the platforms in the last 12 months," said David Emm, a security researcher at Kaspersky Lab, a leading supplier of computer security and anti-virus software. "Recently, we have discovered that a version of the popular game Bug Smasher, installed from Google Play between one and five million times, has been secretly mining the cryptocurrency monero on users' devices," said researchers at IT security firm ESET. The popularity of games makes them attractive for hackers. To lure victims, hackers turn to the digital world's equivalent of the Trojan horse subterfuge of Greek mythology: inside an innocuous-looking app or programme hides a malicious one. Mining bitcoin, ethereum, monero and other cryptocurrencies may be very profitable, but it does require considerable investments and generates huge electricity bills.īut hackers have found a cheaper option: surreptitiously exploiting the processors in smartphones. Legitimate mining operations link thousands of processors together to increase the computing power available to earn cryptocurrencies. In exchange miners are now and then rewarded with some of the currency themselves. Mining is basically the process of helping verify and process transactions in a given virtual currency. It "consists of entrapping an internet server, a personal computer or a smartphone to install malware to mine cryptocurrencies," said Gerome Billois, an expert at the IT service management company Wavestone. This new type of cyberattack is called "cryptojacking" by security experts.
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