New Kaspersky report indicates decline in crypto-mining attacks in 2019

• Web-miner infections were down 59 percent year-over-year, from 5,638,828 infected machines to 2,259,038.
• Crypto-ransomware attacks have been on the rise.

According to recent research by Kaspersky, a multinational cybersecurity and anti-virus provider, crypto-mining malware infections have decreased this year. As claimed by the security experts at Kaspersky, the number of "unique malicious objects" increased by 13.7 percent. They noted a 187 percent increase in web-skimmer documents, malware designed to steal credit card information. 

Web-miner infections also dropped by 59 percent with from 5,638,828 infected machines to 2,259,038. However, popular malware like Trojan.Script.Miner.gen, Trojan.BAT.Miner.gen and Trojan.JS.Miner.m continues to be on the list of top 20 threats. These apps use the computer of the users to mine cryptocurrency b stealing its computational power and decreasing its overall performance. Denis Parinov, a security analyst for Kaspersky, said:

We have observed that the number of 'common' attacks against home users is slightly decreasing, but that the number of 'loud' public cases of crypto-ransomware infections is growing – for example, just two days ago New Orleans was hit by a ransomware.

Parinov believes that crypto mining hackers are looking for more lucrative options. The company also found that phone scammers prefer prepaid debit cards over cryptocurrency. Kaspersky's head of anti-malware research, Vyacheslav Zakorzhevsky stated:

[Mining attacks] have lost their popularity due to lower profitability and cryptocurrencies’ fight against covert mining.

A couple of things were altered on the security scene to push crypto into a corner.

One of the most well-known web-mining services, Coinhive, declared that it is no longer economically viable. This is due to the Monero hard fork and the severe drop of XMR cost on the market. We suspect this is caused by the market and community reaction to the fact that web mining has been used without user consent in most cases.

Kaspersky claimed that crypto-ransomware attacks are still occurring despite a fall in crypto-mining attacks. Parinov said:

Crypto-miners and crypto-ransomware operators are still in the game, but their focus appears to have moved to targeted attacks.

Parinov stated that the users should be alert as the mining attacks are persistent. He urged users to watch for unusual network activity or PC slowdowns. He said:

The main symptom is the slowing down of overall computer or process performance – some freezes or errors can appear on the PC. Additionally, crypto mining requires specific network interactions, but these may be hard to spot for the regular PC user.

 

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