Reports From McAfee Indicate That Crypto Mining Malware Grew Over 4,000% This Year

Malware has been with us since the dawn of the internet and, actually, way before that, too. However, the rise of the internet at the end of the 90s and early 2000s was the moment when it was truly real that malware was a popular threat for people. Some people thought technology would be improved and things would get better, but it looks like it is actually worse now.

According to the December 2018 report of the U. S.-based cybersecurity company McAfee (founded by the same McAfee that currently enjoys his life trolling people on Twitter and being completely unreal about the future prices of Bitcoin), the third quarter of 2018 has seen a rise of 4,000% on crypto mining malware threats, reaching the number of four million new threats compared to less than half a million in 2017.

In fact, crypto mining malware has spread like a plague. This kind of malware was mostly unseen until the end half of 2017. As the crypto market started to see its prices going up, however, the numbers have risen a lot.

Also known as crypto jacking, the software relies on the devices of the victims and it is very effective until they realize that their machines are being used to mine cryptos.

While ransomware that charged Bitcoin or Monero from the victims was more common before, crypto mining malware is more common now because it has become a lucrative business model. They have been using a lot of internet of things (IoT) devices for crypto mining, too, according to McAfee.

While the CPU of IoT devices and even video recorders is lacking, their security is lacking even more, so they are extremely easy to infect. Without proper security measures, these devices are simply a great opportunity for hackers to use them without anybody ever knowing. This way, they can infect many IoT devices and make a huge profit.

Another popular malware was for the Mac OS and was named OSX.Dummy. People downloaded them from chat groups because it was supposed to “fix crypto problems” but in the truth, it was a malware that people installed themselves on their computers.

2018 has seen too much crypto mining malware. There were even malware hiding in programs that looked a lot like Adobe and Microsoft’s programs and people were infected via Mikro Tik WiFi routers.

We can only hope that 2019 will be best. But will it, really? That is, unfortunately, very unlikely.

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