According to reliable information available to Group-IB Threat Intelligence, since the very beginning of the year, the number of hidden mining software offers in Darknet increased in five times.

“The use of computer processing power or infrastructure for cryptocurrency mining without the consent or the knowledge of the owner remains, as before, a relatively popular way of enrichment, despite the smooth tendency to reduce the number of incidents associated with this type of fraud,” the company emphasized.

The company’s message says that during the first half of 2018, Group-IB professionals recorded 477 ads on hacker forums about the sale or lease of cryptojacking programs (the hidden use of computer resources in the background). This information was provided by the company in the field of investigation and prevention of cybercrime Group-IB.

With all this, the software has the relatively low price – the minimum price for programs for hidden mining is $ 0.5, the average cost is $ 10.

Tools for the hidden mining can be obtained by everyone. Specialists also note the wide availability of Trojan-Miner viruses, which are used to infect other people’s devices for illegitimate generation of various types of cryptocurrency. Symmetric response to this threat was the detection of various manifestations of mining at the network level. This is also a threat to the stability and continuity of business processes due to the slowdown of corporate systems and increased depreciation of hardware. Unauthorized work of third-party programs without the knowledge of business owners is fraught with reputational losses, and in addition risks from the side of compliance and regulators.

Group-IB professionals emphasize that suspicious activity analysis should be performed in a non-hazardous, isolated environment while ensuring complete confidentiality of data on infected machines, infrastructure segments, and other resources. In addition, companies should be able to defend themselves against traditional insider information trading, in other words from their own unscrupulous employees who decided to multiply their earnings from the resources of the employer.