Miwiki TODAY - Malicious program attacks that act as cryptocurrency miners or digital currencies such as bitcoin are getting more and more disturbing. Experts from Kaspersky Lab have recently identified a fraudulent action, in which software (mining) software is distributed and installed secretly to a user's PC through pirated software commonly used by users for work and entertainment.
The user's PC is then exploited to mine the crypto currency, with all the benefits gained into the pockets of criminals involved in the action.
Kaspersky Lab experts have found a number of sites that offer a way for users to download free pirated software for popular computer programs and applications. To gain trust, criminals even use a domain name similar to the original.
After downloading the software, the user receives an archive that also contains the mining program. This mining program will be installed automatically, along with the desired software. Once installed, miners secretly operate the victim's computer, generating crypto currency for criminals.
In addition, experts also found that some miner programs have special features that allow users to change the number of wallets, pools or miners from a distance. This means that criminals can at any time set up other destinations for crypto currencies and thus manage their earnings by distributing intercomputer mining results, or even making victim computers work for other mining pools.
"While not considered harmful, software mining is able to reduce the performance of the device, which inevitably affects the user's online experience in general.In addition, it increases the electricity bill of victims, although not the greatest loss felt by victims of this fraud, just this is not fun, "said Malware Analyst at Kaspersky Lab, Alexander Kolesnikov through an official statement received Beritasatu.com, Wednesday (27/12).
To prevent your PC from being used as part of the mining network, Kaspersky Lab recommends downloading only legal software from proven sources. In addition, be reminded to install security solutions such as Kaspersky Internet Security or Kaspersky Free to protect against all possible threats, including malicious software mining.