Cryptominers Fighting Among Themselves for a Share of Your PC

The year 2016 and 2017 we were talking about Ransomware, and now in 2018 we are looking at cryptojacking, that brutally takes over with no mercy. Unlike ransomware, the user never knows that a program is running alongside his system that is minting digital currency.

If your computer gets hit by ransomware, your data files are encrypted and – unless you have a secure backup – your only way of getting them back is by paying your attacker with an anonymous cryptocurrency, and hoping they’ll respond with the key to unlock them.

In the ransomware attack, the data are encrypted and the only way to get it back is by paying the ransom, and hope the criminals give you the key to decrypt the data.

Cryptojackers are entirely a different gene, they don’t give a damn about encrypting your files, or putting up those scary screens or even bothering to walk you through the process of paying the ransom. They are silent killers, they take over your computer’s process, eat up the CPU resources to mine the cryptocurrency all at your expense.

The guys mining cryptocurrency is quite a patient lot, they don’t rush so that the computers are not overloaded or heated up as they mine for digital money. Well, you can see that your data usage has skyrocketed, the system has gone slow, and the battery is not keeping up. So these are the signs that your system is up to something dubious.

Finding cyrptomining malware is not the problem here, the problem is that the growth of attackers targeting innocent user’s PCs, web browsers, and server that it is uncommon for a cryptomining code. Such attackers are greedy and they tend to extract the maximum from the CPU, putting undue pressure on the CPU.

“A newly-encountered malicious miner for the Monero cryptocurrency is working hard to kill any potential competitors, it encounters for system resources, using an ever-expanding list”, said a security researcher Xavier Mertens.

As Xavier Mertens describes, a newly-encountered malicious miner for the Monero cryptocurrency is working hard to kill any potential competitors, it encounters for system resources, using an ever-expanding list. It reminds me of the early days of malware when viruses like Den Zuk and Klez would attempt to remove their rivals Brain and the CodeRed worm respectively”.

Ever since the computers came we have seen the inception of different viruses and how it has upgraded.  Today we see, malware fighting malware (cryptominers killing cryptominers) for their share of your PC.