MANILA, Philippines – It appears cryptocurrency miners are growing more prevalent, with unscrupulous miners using other people's tech as a means to make money online.
In the case of a new report by MalwareBytes, Android devices are now at risk as someone has set up a campaign to exploit Android devices' processing power to mine Monero cryptocurrency for them.
MalwareBytes explained Tuesday, February 13, that a group appeared to be performing a "drive-by cryptomining" campaign for Monero (XMR) currency.
The group's activities were observed in late January, but may have started as early as November 2017, with millions of mobile users (presumably Android devices are targeted, they said) getting redirected to a browser page designed to perform in-browser cryptomining.
The browser page also tells you it is mining currency using your Android device until you enter a Captcha code to stop it.
MalwareBytes added that the Monero cryptominer group may have gotten quite a large number of visits and processes done through their campaign, at "about 800,000 visits per day, with an average time of 4 minutes spent on the mining page." (READ: At least 4,200 websites had cryptominer active through hacked plugin)
It is recommended that you maintain some kind of legitimate security software or limit your downloads to official apps from the Google Play Store to lessen the chances of ending up on the wrong end of a cryptomining campaign. – Rappler.com