McAfee- a giant cybersecurity company has disclosed in their latest report (March 2018) that hijacking showed a significant growth rate in the last period and somehow concur with the hits that take place in marketing industry of cryptocurrency.

The study focuses on the rising trend of new malwares and other negative incidents held by the end of 2017. The researchers found that a lot of hacker attacks occurred on Bitcoin and Monero wallets once the BTC’s value grew up over $19.000.

“This shift reinforces the point that cybercriminals will always seek to combine the highest returns in the shortest time with the least risk. Security researchers have also recently discovered Android apps used for cryptocurrency mining.”, according to the Report.

Cybercriminal circles have adopted new attack scheme

The Chief Scientist at McAfee, Raj Samani has specified that by the end of 2017 the cybercriminal cycles have adopted new attack schemes, commenting that “Even tried-and-true tactics, such as ransomware campaigns, were leveraged beyond their usual means to create smoke and mirrors to distract defenders from actual attacks. Collaboration and liberalized information-sharing to improve attack defenses remain critically important as defenders work to combat escalating asymmetrical cyberwarfare.”

According to the March report, the hackers are searching for attacking methods using the Internet of Things (IoT) fragility by developing new digital asset fraud codes.

“Cybercriminals would rather find outside computing power instead of using their own equipment because the price of a dedicated mining machine could exceed $5,000,” the researchers added in Report.

We want to remember you about two Russian employees that were detained after they tried to mine digital currencies using the supercomputer owned by their boss.

Monero wallets are targeted by cybercriminals

McAfee’s research found that cybercriminals are looking after the vulnerability of Monero coins as well as devices where these are kept and not only. The security company Avast has announced in their report from last month that hackers “will create an army to mine Monero”.

The Mobile Business Manager of Avast, Gagan Singh replied that “Until recently, cybercriminals were focused on spreading malware to turn PCs into crypto-mining machines, but now we are also seeing an uptick in attacks targeting IoT devices and smartphones.”

We advise you to keep your digital assets on a secure wallet, such as a hardware one. In order not to fall into the net of hackers, make sure that the websites you click on are secured.