You could be mining cryptocurrency already but you just don’t know it. The unfortunate thing is, you aren’t getting any financial gain from using that processing power.
Through “cryptojacking”, a user is forced to mine a cryptocurrency through their computer or phone when they visit an infected site. The malware forces the machine to work at full-capacity until the user leaves the site.
Jérôme Segura with Vancouver-based
Malwarebytes Labs reports that Since September 2017,
malicious cryptomining has been his top detection overall.
Computer security researcher Troy Mursch with
Bad Packets Report estimates that as many as 50,000 Canadian have been compromised, including municipal sites and over 7,000 WordPress sites.