Beware of Crypto-jackers
Whenever we think about web threats, issues like Malware, Hacking and pornography are probably the first to pop on our head, but 21st Cyberspace is witnessing one new web menace that’s quickly gaining international attention– “Crypto Jacking”. It’s the secret use of your computing device to mine crypto-cash and anyone casually using internet at home can be unwittingly functioning as proxy member of a hacker’s team. Over the past few months there has been frightening growth in the number of websites running scripts that silently crypto jack user’s computer resources and secretly make them mine digital currency for miscreants.
This November a Security Engineer at Threat Nix claim on his Facebook wall that OnlineKhabar, the fifth viewed webpage in Nepal had script of ‘Coin Hive’ running in the background which used to secretly takeover user’s’ computer resources to mine ‘Cryptocurrency’. After this revelation OnlineKhabar itself confirmed the presence of secret code which is now removed from the website. OnlineKhabar in recent released document claimed the involvement of third party and demand legal action against the culprit — which indicate ‘Cyber attack’. If OnlineKhabar can be hacked for ‘crypto mining’, how can we guarantee the safety of other personal and public websites? How can people enter any site without suspension? In case of Nepal, the craze of online activities has reached to platonic level but still, except some handful of IT experts, almost entire population is vulnerable to such crypto hacking.
Worldwide IT experts and popular sites owners are now rampantly using websites to mine crypto currencies using visitor’s regular sites. Security agency Trend Micro claims that high-traffic sites like online news, file sharing websites have been found with malicious scripts using visitors’ CPU for mining purposes without their consent. Attackers exploit the interconnected machines of million gullible users as they visit such deliberately infected websites. These scripts can be easily misused by website owners or attackers because it requires simple JavaScript file that website owners have to embed on their sites and it automatically processes crypto mining using each visitor’s machine. Easy bucks right? One study conducted by G Willems Lab recently found that more than 25k sites actively running crypto mining scripts in visitors’ browsers, which overtime could make million amounts.
A crypto currency runs on a Blockchain, which is like digital ledger replicated numerous times by various machines associated with crypto mining service. The updated document is circulated and made accessible to crypto currency holders. The ownership of every single crypto currency and every bit of transaction in flow is recorded in Blockchain. The Blockchain is operated by miners, who use mega computers to handle the computation of transactions. Their job is to guarantee the validity of information and update each transaction, thereby determining secure processing of whole transaction. For same process some miners use the scripts in popular website and anonymously make user’s computer the part of whole mining business.
These scripts mine the crypto-cash popularly known as Monero which is also an anonymous form of Bitcoin because you can buy it offline with physical currencies. According to Coin Hive any webpage with one million visitors in a month could make about $116 worth of Monero. This year alone some high-streaming websites including torrent’s gateway, ‘The Pirate Bay’ was found running Crypto mining scripts on its website, secretly using visitors’ machine to heap Monero currencies. The process is simple: users enter torrent site to search file, a script of Coin-hive operates in background, mobilizing user’s CPU resource to generate Monero currency for the site’s admin. Around thirty precent of the profits goes to Coin Hive, whereas sites like OnlineKhabar and The Pirate Bay keeps the rest.
Recently some researchers from “Malwarebytes Labs” have discovered a new technique that allows compromised sites to keep mining even after a user has closed the browser window. The window remains open and via hidden script, it continues generating Monero for website admin until user makes any precise move to close it. Mining crypto-cash has become digital race for some genius. Like Bitcoin, the first decentralized ledger currency released in early 2009. Similar digital currencies have evolved in the worldwide market since then, including Titcoin, Ethereum, Zcash and many others. Today’s digital world is busy in competitive currency game where people can make larger profit after investing a few bucks in technology and earn million by mining digital coins.
The Government of Nepal should exercise security measures to safeguard such digital intrusion because our country too remains no exception of such Crypto-Jacking. If popular news site like OnlineKhabar is hacked to function as medium for such illegal digital practice, it’s likely that other agents may also be sponging on our computer resources. Thus Nepal government should introduce strong law that, all websites like OnlineKhabar, which thrives in public domain and has million viewership, must hire pro IT expert to manage and secure their online resource. Because hackers can intrudes millions of visitor’s machines using the loopholes on such popular sites. The increasing rate of crypto-jacking suggests that, in individual level, some protection measures will have to be taken in browsers to reduce the threat of digital intruders. Available in Chrome browser, extensions like ‘Miner Block’ and ‘No Coin’ can block popular crypto miners from using our machine.
References:
https://techlekh.com/onlinekhabar-mining-monero-coins/
https://gwillem.gitlab.io/2017/11/07/cryptojacking-found-on-2496-stores/
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