Crypto-mining malware is the number one threat in 2018

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Crypto-mining malware is the number one threat, according to a new report. Crypto-mining attacks surpassed ransomware in the first quarter of 2018. Comodo Cybersecurity released a new report and found that crypto-miners is at the top of detected malware incidents in the first quarter of 2018. Ransomware attacks, on the other hand, declined significantly over the past three months in 2018. Criminals' desire to steal money more efficiently were seen in the surge in crypto-mining. There is a strong correlation between the number of attacks and current crypto-currency prices. In the first quarter of 2018, Comodo detected 28.9 million crypto-miner infections out of a total of 300 million malware infections. The number of unique crypto-miner strains grew from 93,750 in January to 127,000 in March. During the same period, the reports of new ransomware variants fell from 124,320 in January to 71,540 in March.

     Experts speculate that the high prices of cryptocurrencies have increased the amount of money that hackers can make. Unlike the one-time payment of ransomware, crypto-miners remain in infected machines or websites because they are often either unnoticed or tolerated by users, who find a performance hit more acceptable than dealing with the issue. Researchers first saw a surge in malicious crypto-mining in 2017 after Bitcoin's value skyrocketed to $20,000. While crypto-mining itself is not illegal, stealing other people's computer resources to conduct mining on their behalf is. In February researchers found crypto-mining malware hidden on the Los Angeles Times' interactive Homicide Report webpage that was quietly harnessing visitors' CPUs to mine Monero cryptocurrency. Crypto-miner attacks then surged in 2018 as cryptocurrencies' market capitalization topped $264 billion, shifting the attention of cybercriminals away from ransomware.


The growing popularity of crypto-mining malware is not what is giving the security industry sleepless nights, it is the increase use of new, sophisticated techniques. Kaspersky Lab released a report in March that highlighted how one crypto-mining gang tracked over six months made $7 million with the help of 10,000 computers infected with mining malware. Crypto-mining is continuing to change the cryptocurrency being mined; Monero is now the cryptocurrency of choice for crypto-mining malware, replacing Bitcoin. Monero's features also makes it more desirable for miners; the cryptocurrency hides transaction parties and amounts, cannot be tracked or linked to previous transactions, and is designed for mining on ordinary computers.