Illicit cryptocurrency mining is on the rise

If your computer and/or smart fridge has been running slow in the last few months, you might be in the cryptocurrency mining business and not even realize it. A new paper by the cybersecurity industry group Cyber Threat Alliance finds that rates of cryptojacking — the term for secretly installed malware stealing your computing power to mine cryptocurrency for someone else — have risen by 459 percent since 2017.

While an individual person might need multiple powerful computers dedicated to mining in order to recoup a single Bitcoin, organizations involved in cryptojacking can get around this assumed pre-requisite by distributing the power of a single miner between several devices. Instead of Bitcoin, cryptojackers often dedicate their stolen power on cryptocurrencies such as Monero, whose code is meant to resist powerful industrial-strength mining rigs and, whose relative anonymity is great if you’ve just mined some of it using malware and would like to convert it to cash….