06 September 2019 10:39, UTC

The Mozilla Firefox dev team came out with a blog post on the 3rd of September notifying their users that major changes would be coming to the browser in the near future. The two main topics that the dev team covered were the issues with tracking cookies and crypto miners.

Cryptominers are usually installed as extensions on the browser, or tap into the users CPU without their consent the moment they access a specific website. There used to be some additional extensions to the browser in order to prevent these break-ins but the dev team believes a custom made “default” setting to prevent them is much more reliable.

Once the crypto miner is tapped into the user’s CPU it drains its performance rating and also decreases the battery significantly. This creates an issue as once the malware is on the computer, it doesn’t matter if the victim leaves the website where the malware came from.

It continues mining cryptocurrencies at the cost of the users’ CPU power while not compensating the user at all. The computer is not able to discover the issue in itself and most antiviruses are not fine-tuned to block the malware as well. As a result, an illegal break-in on a user’s private property ends up benefiting somebody else at the expense of the user.

The crypto-miner blocker will become a default setting for all Mozilla Firefox users as only a small percentage used the added extensions in the past.

What websites have this malware

Several websites have already been identified as the perpetrators of this malware, but no clear type has been defined as of yet. The devs believe that any website could potentially hold the crypto mining malware for users even if they are not directly connected to cryptocurrencies or finances.

However, according to several experts at Casinocrunch, unlicensed gambling websites are usually the ones to host this malware on their servers:



“There have been cases in the past when an unlicensed website, trying to somehow compensate for its “undercover” marketing campaign installed this malware on the website, which would be immediately injected onto the users’ devices who not only clicked the ad but also went to the website by both search engine and direct access.



It is a terrible practice in the industry, but the owners of these platforms justify their actions by saying that licensing is unfairly priced and favors bigger brands, which is why they’re forced to install this malware in the hopes of generating at least some income when users refuse to register with them.”

According to the same experts, most of these platforms have started to ask for consent from the users, but that also cannot be trusted. A large majority of them simply ask for it in order to tick a box in the regulations and avoid any lawsuits. In reality, the “No” button doesn’t do anything and still allows the malware to be downloaded.

With the addition of this new protection protocol from Mozilla, it will be much easier to block it even if the website hiders it under the “consent” feature.

Other websites that tend to inject this malware are the fraudulent crypto wallet, investment company and robot ads one may find on platforms such as Facebook and various ad banner placements on different blogs. The Firefox dev team would be doing webmasters a large favor by preventing any image-damaging ads from hurting their core audience.

Image courtesy of WDS Media

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