Cryptojacking is a technique popularized by the website ThePirateBay which consists of integrating into the web code a mining system using Javascript, which ‘hijacks’ the user’s processor that surfs the web to mine cryptocurrencies. However, now according to the reports, some sites are mining cryptocurrencies using your CPU even when you close browser.
Some Sites Are Mining Cryptocurrency Using Your CPU Even When You Close Browser
The Bitcoin surpassed yesterday the 11,000 dollars, although later it adjusted its value something below. The rest of cryptocurrencies are also worth more and more money and a real fever have been unleashed around them.
As always happens in these cases, the “more fashionable” things attract the eyes of everyone, including hackers and cybercriminals as well. One of the last practices is to mine for them cryptocurrencies when we visit a web page. In addition, it has now been discovered that websites can continue to undermine cryptocurrencies on your PC even if we close the browser.
A few weeks ago we told you about the great problem of the “hidden” cryptocurrency mining scripts and the most worst thing about this is that we do not even know when it started.
Everything goes back to when The Pirate Bay began to test these actions as a way to replace advertising revenues, a segment that has been greatly affected by the use of blockers.
After this, many portals have signed up to this practice, in most cases without notifying users. Threats have also spread in the form of malware for the sole purpose of using users’ computers for the mining of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin or Ethereum.
The thing has come to such a point that many have had to come by and the tech giant Google’s Chrome wants to prevent the mining of cryptocurrencies natively by introducing protection measures in the browser. At the moment, we can opt for extensions like “No Coin – Block miners on the web!” https://goo.gl/1AxXsn to avoid it, although things are going to get worse in the coming months.
Watch out! Websites can continue to undermine even if you close the browser
Until now, it was enough to close the websites that used the cryptocurrency mining in the background through Coinhive, to end this practice. However, Malwarebytes is warning of a new technique that allows mining services “hidden” for the user to continue working even when we have closed the browser.
The technique works through the opening of a hidden pop-up that hides behind the Windows bar on the back of the watch. This makes it difficult to detect that the browser is still open. That hidden window is where the mining service continues to operate indefinitely, squeezing our processor in an unlimited way until we realize the problem.
The alternatives to end this practice also go through the use of antivirus solutions that block the mining of cryptocurrencies or the extension that we have discussed a few paragraphs above. These are the options until the main navigators get down to work and finish with this practice.
So, what do you think about this? Simply share your views and thoughts in the comment section below.