According to research from the cybersecurity firm McAfee, crypto-mining malware was up 4,000 percent this year.
McAfee’s December 2018 report shows that there were nearly four million new mining malware threats in the third quarter of 2018 alone, compared to less than 500,000 in 2017 and 2016.
Cybercriminals have begun focusing on leveraging internet of things (IoT) devices for crypto mining. New malware targeting these devices saw a 72 percent increase and total IoT-targeting malware grew by 203 percent in the last four quarters.
The cybersecurity firm has also discovered a Mac OS threat named OSX.Dummy, which is being distributed on cryptomining chat groups. The malware, posted online, suggests that users download software to fix “crypto problems,” after which it injects its malicious code. This way, users essentially infected their own devices, he explained.
