Hundreds Of Websites Affected By Another Cryptojacking Incident
The world of cryptocurrencies has never been one without its fair share of controversy and problems which constantly leads to people being skeptical about the alternative economic system. In a string of similar attacks which have been going on for a while now, hackers have managed to infect hundreds of websites with software which enables them to make use of other peoples’ computers to mine cryptocurrency for them through their browsers.
Drupal Content Management System
In this recent most cryptojacking attack, hundreds of websites which make use of the Drupal Content Management system have been injected with the malicious software which is sued to mine cryptocurrencies by using other peoples’ computational power to mine Monero.
This attack has been discovered by the security researcher who works for the website Bad Packets Report. Troy Mursch said on Saturday that over three hundred websites have been affected by the attack with the hackers having installed Coinhive, the browser mining software. They did so by taking advantage of a soft spot in the outdated version of the Drupal Content management system and installed the browser mining software Coinhive which uses the computational power of the website visitor to mine Monero.
From Ransomware to Cryptojacking
Recent months have seen more and more cryptojacking incidents becoming common in comparison to the ransomware attacks which were afflicting many in recent months. Ransomware attacks are also a very popular avenue for hackers who would hack their victims’ computers and scramble all the data through encryption and hold their data at ransom until payment was made to them in either Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency in order for them to decrypt the data.
More and more hackers are now resorting to using cryptojacking as a means of soliciting income from their victims. The reason why cryptojacking seems to be adopted more and more by hackers probably has to do with the fact that through cryptojacking, they can utilize the computational power of their victims to mine cryptocurrency for them – all without the victim getting to even know that the victim’s computer is being hacked to mine cryptocurrencies on someone else’s behalf.
The only noticeable aspect of a cryptojacking attack is that the computer of the affected person will be slower than when it is not mining for cryptocurrencies in the background. Although it does not do anymore than that, this could become a serious problem as this also puts the computer processing chips through additional stress which can lead to wear and tear over the course of time. Here is a list of all the websites affected by this latest attack.
That being said, not all those who are making use of Coinhive are doing so only for malicious gains. An online news outlet called Salon uses Coinhive in order to raise funds so that it can continue providing its visitors with more content. Since the advent of Adblocking software, they needed to resort to an alternative method to generate revenue and that was found through using Coinhive. However, they expressly ask for the permission of their visitors to run Coinhive.
Charlie Shrem is a Bitcoin pioneer, a social economist and digital currency trader. His work in this field is legendary. In 2011, at the dawn of the crypto era, he founded BitInstant, the first and largest Bitcoin company. In 2013, he founded the Bitcoin Foundation and serve as its vice chairman. Since then, Charlie has advised more than a dozen digital currency companies, launched and managed numerous partnerships between crypto and non-crypto companies, and is the go-to guy for some of the world’s wealthiest entrepreneurs. In short, he is the ultimate insider at the epicenter of the crypto universe.