Cryptominers dominate 2018's malware landscape
The four most prevalent malware types in 2018 were cryptominers and they impacted 37 percent of organizations globally.
The latest security report from Check Point shows that despite a fall in the value of all cryptocurrencies, 20 percent of companies continue to be hit by cryptomining attacks every week. At the same time ransomware attacks have fallen sharply, impacting just four percent of organizations globally.
Cryptominers still dominate the malware charts
The latest Global Threat Index from Check Point shows that at the end of last year cryptominers still took the top three places in the malware charts, despite an overall drop in value across all cryptocurrencies in 2018.
Coinhive retained its number one position for the 13th month in a row, impacting 12 percent of organizations worldwide. XMRig was the second most prevalent malware with a global reach of eight percent, closely followed by the JSEcoin miner in third with a global impact of seven percent.
Cryptomining malware surges in second quarter
Cryptocurrency mining malware has seen an increase of 86 percent in the second quarter of 2018, according to a new report from McAfee Labs.
After gaining ground the fourth quarter of 2017 to around 400,000 samples, new cryptomining malware samples grew a stunning 629 percent to more than 2.9 million in Q1 of 2018. This trend has continued in with more than 2.5 million new samples detected.
Kodi add-ons used to distribute currency miners
Users of the Kodi media center may already know that the Netherlands-based repository for third-party add-ons, XvBMC, was recently shut down due to copyright violations.
Researchers at security company ESET have discovered that the repository was also part of a malicious cryptomining campaign dating back to December 2017. This is the second instance of Kodi being used for cryptojacking this year.
Now you can insure your business against cryptomining
It's common for businesses to insure against the risk of losing their systems to natural disasters or power outages, but a new product allows you to insure against fraudulent use of IT and telephony, including cloud and internet-based services.
San Francisco-based cyber insurer Coalition is launching Service Fraud coverage that reimburses organizations for the direct financial losses they incur as the result of being charged for fraudulent use of business services including Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Network-as-a-Service (NaaS), and telephony services.
Massive router hack used to spread CoinHive cryptomining script
Researchers at Trustwave have uncovered an attack on tens of thousands of MikroTik routers which is being used to embed CoinHive cryptominer scripts in websites.
A surge in CoinHive actvity in Brazil at the start of this week alerted researchers that something was happening. Further investigation showed that MicroTik devices were at the root of the problem and all were using the same CoinHive site key.
How to protect Kodi from cryptojacking
Cryptojacking might not be as terrifying a threat as ransomware, but it’s a major annoyance that’s becoming more and more prevalent. If you’re not familiar, the attack essentially uses other people’s systems to mine cryptocurrency, usually without their consent.
When a cryptocurrency miner is running, your system will experience slowdowns and maybe crashes. The miner will eat up system resources, interfering with tasks like streaming video.
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