• Mozilla Firefox has announced that they will add protection against Cryptojacking to the Firefox browser
• These need to be manually opted-In for by the user
• Future versions of the browser will have them running by default

Despite all the potential good coming out of crypto, there are, undoubtedly, a number of risks that exist within the industry. Besides the various hacks that have taken place in the last few months, crypto users also have to be on the lookout for Cryptojacking. Cryptojacking has been featured more in the news over the last year, such as the story about the millions that have been made from it.

Needless to say, Cryptojacking is a big business and a very real threat to computer owners. Fortunately, some new steps are being taken against them. It was announced on April 9 that Mozilla Firefox, the popular web browser, is installing some protections against cryptojacking in new versions of their browser.

Protections added to beta

The versions of Mozilla Firefox that will feature these protective measures are the Nightly 68 and Beta 67 versions. The protections being put in place are against crypto mining and fingerprinting hack attacks and are found in their content blocking suite of protections.

These new protections were developed by Mozilla Firefox in collaboration with Disconnect, a software security firm, and also is equipped with a list of blacklisted domains that have previously been associated with malware and fingerprint attacks.

For now, the protections are not running by default but have to be set up manually in the privacy and security settings’ section. However, Mozilla Firefox has said that they will be enabled automatically in the upcoming nightly versions.

Bigger problem than previously realized

Cryptojacking refers to the act of illegally using another person’s computer system to mine cryptocurrency for yourself. It has been going on for years but only recently has the extent of the problem been understood.

Various cryptojacking programs disguise themselves as legitimate software and some even carry out the work they advertise, only mining when the computer system is not in use or quietly in the background.

In some cases, these programs have run for months without detection, with the users only noticing a slowdown in their computer’s processing speed or constant overheating. Thankfully, since these activities have been better reported on, more steps are being taken such as these to prevent them.

Hopefully, more browsers come with these protective measures installed and cryptojacking becomes a thing of the past.