Could you be a victim to Cryptojacking?

It was a busy day, we sat down in the evening with a glass of wine and started watching an episode of Madam Secretary on TV, the opening scene starts off with a group of children having fun playing football in Syria and all the sudden a US-made cluster-bomb lands killing them all, US is left wondering who managed to get hold of their device and a load of fingers are being pointed by a number of countries. Time for Elizabeth McCord (as Madam Secretary played by Tea Leoni) to get into action calming tensions between usual suspects, Russia, Syria and Iran.

Meanwhile, at home her teenage son (Jason McCord played by Evan Roe) decided to embark on a get-rich-quick scheme by using the McCord-family broadband and electricity to mine a new form of cryptocurrency, Spectrocoin. As his PC wasn’t as effective enough, he decided to use all the household devices, Tablets, Desktops etc to aide him mine this cryptocurrency without any of his siblings realising anything other than the devices are running extremely slow. After a number of complaints from the kids and realising their own devices running ridiculously slow, the parents realise the probable culprit could only be one, Jason gets called downstairs and after finding out what Jason has been up to his parents later sum it up, ‘our computers are slow because you turned them into your drone-army’.

Jason pinpointed current affairs i.e. conflict that his mother is dealing with, global instability leads to currency fluctuation, investors therefore turn to decentralised cryptocurrency. Nice to know someone is switched on, but maybe not mention to the Secretary of State that you’re betting against her not being able to calm tensions between these three countries, (well, four if you include US)! However, he was very happy to mention that he has made $3,000.00 that month, but his father took the wind out of his sails by pointing out the running costs, which he managed to brush off by quoting rules in financial success and manages to convince his parents to allow him this venture.

Needless to say, all didn’t end well when his mother succeeds in calming tensions, in light of which all investors pull-out of the Spectrocoin and when the parents start to demand money from their now-destitute son for the extortionate electricity bill he tallied up during his entrepreneurial streak, Jason decides to become a busboy and agrees to pay his parents back by piecemeal. 

As entertaining as this was, I couldn’t help wondering could cybercriminals use malware (via botnets) to turn my PC into one of their ‘drone-army’ and as a result be using my internet and electricity to mine cryptocurrency? The answer I found was a resounding yes! Unlike data-theft this new strain of (BotNet hack) malware known as Cryptojackers turns your computer into one of their crytomining drones to earn crypto-cash for cybercriminals leaving a huge deficit on your computer speed, battery life, broadband and electricity.

“Cybercriminals have started supercharging their mining operations by targeting ordinary home computers. Enslave enough PCs with malware and you can harness their collective power for mining. And it can very profitable – at time of publication [25th May 2019] a mined block earned 12.5 Bitcoin, or roughly ￡77,500. Symantec, maker of Norton antivirus software, said in a recent report that it had seen an 8,500% increase in cryptomining malware on devices in 2017…”

Stated Andrew Laughlin (Which Magazine). I had realised that my PC was starting to run a little slow but I put it down to the curse of owning an Apple! Regardless, I immediately looked into what antivirus software to download in case I become subject to Cryptojacking and did find a recommended antivirus software that can spot such malware and protect my PC. The new antivirus software found 18 sneaky malware viruses which my prior free antivirus software managed to miss. 

Just for the record, these cybercriminals who use your PC, internet and electricity are no doubt taking this without your permission, hence engaging in theft of electricity. As UK has an ALL-CRIMES approach to money laundering, any money made from this theft is known as the proceeds of crime and is therefore a predicate offence to money laundering. You may think this is quite trivial but UK takes this very seriously, in fact the UK Parliament states:

“…The approach adopted by the United Kingdom is the "all crimes" approach. No matter how trivial the criminal activity, if there is a suspicion that it might involve property which might be laundered, there is an obligation to report it. From the standpoint of the authorities, the advantages are plain. If every criminal offence is potentially a predicate offence, laundering of the proceeds of any such offence constitutes the criminal offence of money laundering. The prosecutor thus has a choice of prosecuting for the predicate offence, or for the money laundering offence to which it gives rise, or both…”

If you find that your CPU-intensive tasks suddenly start to run 70% slower, your energy use increases and your battery life seems to be running on almost half time, maybe, just maybe worth going for an antivirus software or have a professional look at your PC.