Internet browser of Russia’s Yandex will be able to protect internet users from wrongdoers who use computation capacities of other people’s hardware for covertly mining digital currencies, Kommersant daily reports.
Yandex.Browser will ensure protection from illegal miners by analyzing CPU workload. If it is discovered the processor is overloaded, it will detect and block all malicious scripts in charge of unauthorized mining, whereas there will be no need to block the website where the malware is inserted.
“Such an unauthorized mining can have a negative impact on a user’s computer and can potentially consume up to 100% of each processor core capacity”, Roman Ivanov, Yandex.Browser CEO, notes.
Experts assert that antivirus software and spam busters can also improve protection from unauthorized mining.
Concealed mining of cryptocurrencies is an absolutely new and widespread trend of the past year in cybercrime, Positive Technologies claims.
“We first confronted such an attack in mid-2017, when abusers compromised infrastructure to engage in mining digital currencies – instead of whatever other malicious activities”, Alexei Novikov, expert security center director at Positive Technologies, explains. “They monetized the same exploit which was used for WannaCry ransomware attacks. It was Adylkuzz cyptocurrency mining malware which infected dozens of thousands of workstations and servers in thousands of organizations operating in public governance, banking, fuel and energy, transportation and other industries. The purpose of the malware is to make computers mine cryptocurrencies”.
As Alexei Novikov says, the main risk of a miners’ attack is its operation makes computer capacities insufficient to perform routine tasks, especially at times of peak loads. The companies under attack may also suffer indirect losses since operation of the malware results in increased electricity consumption and hence additional equipment cooling is required, etc.
The other day I learned some Russian by accident due to the new Russian weapon called “Dagger, as I wanted to check on the Russian word and how to spell it. So typed “kinzal into Yandex and got “cinema hall. Was Yandex at fault or me, so I looked again. The romanisation was not “kinzal but “kinzhal and yes “kinzhal is dagger. We are dealing with just one letter difference кинозал cinema hall (note that Yandex now has included “o in the word as I thought it must be). The word for dagger is кинжал kinzhal. So, two words that I have understood for years kino (cinema) and zal (hall) now assist me to remember kinzhal (dagger).