In the third quarter of 2022, Kaspersky experts recorded a sharp increase in crypto miner variants — a growth of over 230 percent. This is shown by the report “The state of cryptojacking in 2022”. Almost every sixth attack via a vulnerability is accompanied by a miner infection.
The number of crypto miners is currently over 150.000 and is three times as high as in the third quarter of 2021. Cyber criminals are currently "earning" an average income of around 1.500 US dollars per month; in one case, a wallet was identified that received a $40.500 (2 BTC) transaction. Monero is the most commonly mined. These and other findings emerge from the current research paper "The state of cryptojacking in 2022" by Kaspersky.
Crypto mining is a tedious and costly process, but it can also be very lucrative, including for cybercriminals. To do this, they install unauthorized mining software on their victim's computer in order to use their computing power and thus generate profit.
2022: 215.843 new crypto miners
In 2022, the number of new modifications of malicious crypto miners has increased sharply. In the first three quarters of this year, experts identified 215.843 new miners, more than twice as many as last year. This increase is due to a sharp jump in the third quarter: more than 150.000 malicious miners were detected in the three months, an increase of over 230 percent compared to the same period last year.
Most (48 percent) of the analyzed samples mined the cryptocurrency Monero (XMR). XMR is known for its advanced technology that anonymizes transaction data to ensure maximum privacy. As a result, neither addresses that trade with Monero nor transaction amounts, balances or transaction histories can be viewed; this makes them attractive to cyber criminals.
Unpatched vulnerabilities for spreading miners
Cyber criminals exploit unpatched vulnerabilities to proliferate miners. Kaspersky telemetry data shows that almost every sixth attack that exploited a vulnerability was accompanied by a miner infection. Miners were used more frequently in the third quarter of 2022 than backdoors, which were the first choice of cybercriminals in the first half of 2022.
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