How does it sound if someone says that a tech giant like Microsoft has fallen prey to cyber criminals? You heard it right! The malicious activity, which was reported by Symantec in January this year, made a number of apps available of Microsoft App Store that allowed illegal crypto mining of Monero.

The app store consisted of eight illegal apps named as Battery Optimizer (Tutorials), VPN Browsers+, Downloader for YouTube Videos, Clean Master+, FastTube, Findoo Browser 2019, and Findoo Mobile & Desktop Search. The apps were loaded with a crypto mining program that allowed users mine Monero. The apps were disguised as battery optimizing, video watching and web searching tutorials.

As per sources, the apps when installed on a system, loaded the Google Tag Manager library within their program codes, and later used for downloading and executing the malicious crypto mining program. The source code used for the activity was reported to be a pirated version of Coinhive, a JavaScript library used by hackers for mining Monero. Though the number of infected computers has not been reported, the company has taken down the apps from its app store.