The National Cryptological Center of Spain, which is dependent on the National Intelligence Center, published a document with recommendations to avoid what is known as cryptojacking.
The document from the National Cryptological Center explains the term cryptojacking. Derives from the conjunction of the words Cryptocurrency (Cryptocurrencies) and Hijacking (Kidnapping).
Thus, it serves to define the illegitimate use of an electronic device, without the consent or knowledge of the user. Cybercriminals take advantage of the processing and calculation capacity of the graphics card, memory, and processor. To carry out the process of obtaining cryptocurrencies and taking the total profits.
The report also states that the rise of cryptojacking has gone hand in hand with the rise in the prices of virtual currencies. And is also characterized by being easy to carry out and automate. With the difficulty of detecting its presence on the infected device.
“During 2017 there was a 34,000% increase in attacks related to cryptojacking. Only in the last three months of 2017, the growth of this type of practice was 8,500 percent,” the report detailed.
Attackers carry out these attacks through fraudulent emails, corrupted files, or even mobile devices. “The document aims to serve as guidance and guidance for the user through a series of recommendations and good practices to avoid these cyberattacks. As well as a decalogue of recommendations to face this threat,” said Ana Olcina, author of the article. on the Moncloa portal.
Among the various recommendations, the document advises users to activate filters.
The document from the National Cryptological Center provided a series of clues to discover if a computer has been “kidnapped.” Explains that you should check if any of the following symptoms appear:
- General machine slowness or Internet connection speed slows down.
- Processor with a high computing load even when there are no open applications.
- Overheating of components and high consumption of electrical energy.
- Unknown processes running.
“All these symptoms are caused by the large use of resources that the crypto miner needs. The tools that can help us in this task are Resmon. (Which allows you to see CPU usage, running programs, etc). And Autorun to detect unknown programs. That run at system startup (the Logon and Scheduled Tasks tabs are the most useful for this case)”, they detailed.
