What is cryptojacking- A Beginners Guide

An ideal machine can mine one bitcoin in 10 minutes, roughly consuming 266,000 kWh. By the way, an average US household consumes about 950 wKh in one month. This striking stat is the root of today's topic. 

What is Cryptojacking?

Cryptojacking is a form of cybercrime involving using people's devices (computers, smartphones, tablets, or even servers) to mine for cryptocurrency. Like most types of crimes in crypto investing, the goal is profit, but unlike other threats, it is designed to be disguised from view.

Cryptojacking is also referred to as malicious mining which allows the hacker to mine the cryptocurrency without paying the electricity, hardware and other mining resources cost.

“Attackers have exploited vulnerabilities in smart devices like routers, smart TVs, and even smart refrigerators to mine cryptocurrencies.”

How does Cryptojacking work?

Miners are required to solve complex computational problems and earn cryptocoin in reward. This process is also responsible for adding momentum to new crypto currencies.

Cryptojacking software is a malicious program, injected to the victims devices (computers, smartphones, tablets, or even servers) to use the computing power of the device. They combine the power of several devices to perform the complex mathematical computation and mine the cryptocurrency. 

For each mine they perform, the program sends the mined reward to the attacker’s crypto wallet. Considering the high consumption of crypto mining, a solution to the ecological challenges is also coined by the name green blockchain.

Cryptojacking attacks

A Cryptojacking attack completely relies upon the hacker's creativity. But there are some methods which are commonly used for cryptojacking.

End point attacks

In recent times, mobile cryptojacking was primarily used as an endpoint malware.It is considered as a money making objective by dropping the malware to the victim devices. 

Conventionally cryptojacking malware was added through the fileless malware, phishing schemes, and with malicious script into the website and web apps.

The most common way cryptojackers used for stealing resources is by sending a endpoint victim a authentic-looking email which cause the victim to click on the link in email which runs a code and place the crypto mining script into the victim device which runs in the background and sends the results to the cryptojacker server.

Another way the cryptojacker use is to inject the script website of an add popup when victim visit these sites and click on the ad pop ups the script will execute in their device.

Search for vulnerable servers and network devices

Crytojackers mostly seek to get more profit for this they usually search for the vulnerable server and network for attack. The reason is because the servers are more powerful as compared to the desktop and also help to get more profit from mining. And for that reason servers are primarily the hunting device to target for attacks. 

The servers which are exposed publicly and contain vulnerabilities such as Log4J. For this crytojackers used these types of servers for crypto mining.

Software supply chain attacks

Cryptojackers are also targeting the software supply chains like open/public repositories with malicious packages and libraries which contain the crypto mining scripts embedded with the source code.

Software supply chain attacks also help the cryptojackers to earn more profit by running malicious scripts with the help of these softwares because these softwares are help the cryptojacker to target end user devices and also the server and network which he is connected to and also the cloud services. 

This type of attack help cryptojacker to run the mining script on the multiple places and in the end will get more profit to the cryptojacker.

Leveraging cloud infrastructure

Many cryptojackers are taking advantage of the scalability of the cloud resources by breaking their infrastructure and using their computation power for their crypto mining.
From the last study by Google’s CyberSecurity Team reported that 86% of cloud resources are compromised and used for crypto mining.

Nowadays cryptojackers mostly target cloud resources as they help them to earn more and more cryptocurrency by using the larger scale of computation power as compared to the single local machine and crypto marketing services. Cloud resources help them to run their calculations on a much larger scale. 

Most common methods do this by searching and scanning the exposed API’s container or open cloud storage buckets. Cryptojackers use these types of resources to mine coins.

The attack is mostly automated which runs and scans the publicly exposed cloud instance or API’s container. Cryptojackers drop their mining script initially into the system and look to propagate this script to the connected network by using cloud cryptojacking. This type of attacks will continue as long as the Docker container and Redis networks are publicly exposed.

“Even high-end PCs with powerful processors couldn't mine profitably enough to cover the costs in cryptojacking.”

How to detect cryptojacking

There are some following ways to detect cryptojacking.

Look for signs of Crypto Mining

If you are a power user of your device, you’ll instantly feel the low performance of your device. Moreover, your device will start consuming more battery power too, and will start heating without any processing performed. 

Network monitoring solution

Network monitoring tools offer many powerful solutions to cryptojacking detection from where the traffic is coming on the device and which type of traffic is coming; it also helps to spot the crypto exchange development and mining activity on the system.

Cloud monitoring and container runtime security

Cryptojacking detection software like cloud monitoring and container runtime security scanning will help you to detect the cryptomines into the cloud network. Google Cloud expanded its cloud security department and added a new department called Virtual Machine Threat Detection (VMTD) which detects unauthorized crypto miners from cloud networks.

How to prevent cryptojacking

Crypto jacking is designed in this way to avoid long-term detection. It is a low and slow attack. To detect the cryptojacking and alert the attacker there are some cryptojacking protection tools that come along to detect and avoid the cryptojacking. There are some following ways that help to prevent the cryptojacking on the resources.

Strong endpoint protection

To prevent cryptojacking we can use the anti cryptojacking system which is capable enough to detect the mining on the network. This will also help to secure web-browsers from these types of scripts to execute on the browser.

Patch and harden servers

Patch and harden servers is a way to secure the services which are in use and off the other services which are unused and publicly exposed. Cryptojackers are mostly looking for the server and API’s which are un-secure and publicly exposed; this will help them to use the server resources and execute a crypto trading bot.

Software composition analysis

Software composition analysis (SCA) tools provide better info and visibility about the resources that are being used into the software and also avoids the supply chain attacks for cryptocurrency mining.

Hunt down cloud misconfigurations

Hunt down cloud misconfiguration is a most impactful method for the organization to detect the unauthorized and unauthenticated API in software and make tight cloud configurations for it. Also avoid to hardcore the cloud credentials into the code.

This guide should have improved your cryptojacking knowledge. Want more insights and professional advice? Explore our different crypto blog topics or contact us. Our experts are only a message away. Enhance your cryptocurrency trip today!