Cryptocurrency mining

  • 9 October 2017
  • 1 reply
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Userlevel 5
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Hi All
 
Found this article on the BBC news website, which is a bit worrying. 
 I should say that I have not noticed any example of this on my own PC.
How do I tell for sure?
 
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-41518351
 
 

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Userlevel 5
A quick search shows me identical articles on a ton of fringe news sites in addition to the BBC and none of the classic security or tech news sites I regularly use. There are other articles that may be the basis from the last few days but it looks like the BBC is the source of a ton of copies of this exact article.
 
It sounds scary but if the code actually tries to change anything on your PC Webroot would  quite carefully watch and once classified remove it.
 
From reading the article it does not actually sound terribly dangerous to the end user. It could be a problem for web site operators and the like who will be accused of using visitors resources and have to clean up the mess, perhaps take a hit to their reputation, but the actual end user impact would seem to be a slightly slower web experience when visiting infected sites as their PC runs the web script.
 
Good old WRSA should as I said handle the unwanted intrusion just fine based on my understanding of their technology.
 
 It does seem as if CloudFlare is saying there is a spike of malware mining crypto currency, but again it seems WRSA should keep us safe if some program starts running constantly and calling home to mine crypto currency.
 
Dave

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