- Researchers analyzed samples from 2007 to 2018
- Monero community has started a support website
- Monero (XMR) has become the darling of criminals
It is estimated that a huge amount of all the Monero (XMR) cryptocurrency in circulation was mined by cybercriminal operations and botnets. This accounts for over $57 million worth of cryptocurrency.
Close to One Million XMR Mined by Malware
The researchers, according to the ZDNet publication, say they analyzed 4.4 million malware samples that were discovered between 2007 and 2018 and discovered that close to one million of those samples were crypto mining malware. The results of the study, which was part of their cybersecurity research project, were published in a report by the academics in the UK and Spain.
The report that was released earlier this month showed that up to 5 percent of all Monero (XMR) was created fraudulently. The Monero (XMR) community recently decided to create a website to assist any users who have been affected by the problem. The website addresses the persistent and ongoing use of malicious software in the XMR community and contains information about diagnosing and eliminating the malicious software.
The researchers used data they collected to track down payments from mining pools to the groups owning each wallet and realized there was a similarity in that malware strain campaigns thanks to similarities and shared cryptocurrency addresses. The group found that even though cryptocurrency mining by groups begun in the last 2000s and the early 2010s; Monero (XMR) has become the darling of cybercriminals.
Monero is classified as a privacy coin that has a private, un-linkable, untraceable and analysis-resistant transactions which it achieves via ‘Multilayered Linkable Spontaneous Anonymous Group signatures (MLSAG),’ a ring confidential transaction (RCT), and stealth addresses.
The price of Monero (XMR) has dropped over 91 percent over the last one year after it reached the all-time high of $500 during the December 2017 cryptocurrency market surge. The coin’s market cap is currently at $737 million with a trading volume of $11.28 million over the past 24 hours.
Cryptojacking Continues to Be a Menace for the Industry
Cryptojacking is defined as the unauthorized use of another person’s computing power to mine cryptocurrencies without their consent or knowledge. In most cases, the hackers achieve this by tricking the victim into clicking a malicious link in an email, which ends up loading a crypto mining code on the victim’s computer.
The criminals can also infect a website of an online ad using a JavaScript Code that is designed to auto-execute as soon as it is loaded in a victim’s browser. The crypto mining code will almost always work in the background as the victim uses their computer for their normal business, with the only sign that a keen user will notice lags in execution and slower performance.
