The number of Crypto Jacking cases in the first quarter of 2019 increased by 29%

According to a study by McAfee antivirus company, in the 1st quarter of this year, the number of malware installations for cryptocurrency mining increased by 29% compared to the previous quarter.

The report says that the number of cases of crypto-jacking has increased due to an increase in the rate of bitcoin. Interestingly, at the same time, hackers became less picky about choosing an operating system – computers on both Microsoft Windows and Apple MacOS are susceptible to attacks.

Computer security experts point out that Windows systems typically become infected through vulnerabilities in the PowerShell scripting language. Typically, with the help of such scripts, attackers mine the Monero cryptocurrency. At the same time, viruses, once on the same server, try to infect other computers.

Separately, experts noted the CookieMiner virus for MacOS. After the computer is infected, the program tries to steal user personal data and account information on popular cryptocurrency exchanges.

Note that 2018 was the heyday of crypto jacking – in comparison with 2017, the number of virus installations for hidden mining has grown by more than 40 times.