What is hidden mining and how to protect it from it?

Miners, in the usual sense of the word, for self-earnings, crypto-currencies invest considerable money to equip their mining farms. But there are people who are trying to get around this stage and go directly to mining in not entirely honest ways. One of these methods is hidden mining.

 

How does hidden mining work?

The process of hidden mining is carried out by a special program “hidden miner”. The hidden miner (stealth miner) in the automatic mode leads the mining unnoticed for the user. That is, this third-party software, which is installed on a computer, uses its resources and lists all the earned funds to the developer’s wallet.

Hidden mining is a fairly common phenomenon in our time. The reasons for that are the great desire of the malefactors to make money on others, while not having the technology of great power and the ability to pay for electricity costs. Already today, one transaction “eats” electricity one and a half times more than the average American family consumes per day. And according to expert forecasts, in three years the cost of producing the most popular digital currency will be comparable to the annual electricity consumption of a country such as Denmark.

Most often, malicious hidden miner gets to the computer in such ways:

  • Through any downloaded and then launched files;
  • Direct attachment to the device (is rare);
  • Through unauthorized remote access.

The program connects to one of the Mining Pools, where it produces virtual coins, and eventually more and more CPU loads. The main objective of such a program is precisely in the mining of crypto currency due to the resources of foreign equipment. Earned crypto currency is transferred directly to the purse of the swindler.

Usually, hidden miners massively infect office computers. In them, as a rule, a weak video card, so you can not use the resources of the GPU processor. Therefore, the mine has to be on the central processor. The most interesting thing is that you can not make much money on this. Approximately 200 infected office computers will bring the creator of the software about $ 30 a month. And to get out on some decent income, you will need to infect several thousand computers.

 

Types of hidden mining

 

Hidden Browser Mining
Unfortunately, many do not know that visiting unknown Internet resources can harm the computer. This rule is applicable in our case. It is enough to go to the page, in the script which is entered fraudulent code, and your laptop or computer will instantly become a part of someone’s system for generating virtual coins.

Today, a hotbed of contagion can become not only unknown sites, but, as it turned out not so long ago, quite respectable resources. Such a charge was recently put forward to the well-known television channel ShowTime (USA).

Virus-miners
For the first time about virus-miners started talking back in 2011. Since that time, they continue to attack the technology of ordinary users around the world. You can get infected by clicking on the link from the e-mile. In the risk zone – computers of high power, mostly gaming.

In general, viruses are more dangerous in comparison with browser-based mining, as they are more actively using the power of computer technology. At the same time, hundreds of thousands of users around the world become their victims.

What is the danger of hidden mining for your computer?

Like any virus software, a hidden miner carries a danger to your computer. First of all, the presence of such a program on the computer inevitably harms the operating system. Still, the virus-minor belongs to the category of Trojans.

In addition, this program “eats” the working power of the processor and video card, which affects the productivity of the computer. Even worse, it may be that a hidden miner will be able to open a fraudster access to your personal data, including financial information and the possibility of obtaining passwords for purses and cards.

How to discover and hide hidden mining?

The first and most obvious sign of infection of the computer is a slowdown. If the technician works most of the time normally and starts to slow down only on one site, it’s possible that black miners penetrated your computer through the browser. The most dangerous thing in this respect is sites that require a long time to find a user – torrent trackers, resources for computer games and watching movies.

Check if you have a hidden miner on your computer, you can start by comparing the performance of the video card and the processor when working in normal mode and with high loads, for example, during the game. Also, you can download a program for diagnosing a PC with the ability to test its individual components, such as AID64 and check the load of the video card and processor before and after closing the background programs.

The basic rules of protection from hidden mining: do not go through questionable links, do not download products that do not have a license; Do not activate keys from incomprehensible sources. The anti-virus needs to be regularly updated, at the first signs of slowing down it is recommended to run the “task manager” and check if there is a program on your computer that uses it at the limit of its capacity. Also, you can install special utilities that provide protection against viruses and report updates in the registry.

One of the most effective ways to protect against blacklister attacks on the browser are the following steps:

  • Edit the hosts file.
  • Install the NoCoin browser extension and the Anti-Web Miner utility.
  • Disable JavaScript in your browser using No Script.
  • Add anti-malware to uBlock and AdBlock.

To be honest, you can not completely protect yourself from a miner-bot. After all, on the Internet there is nothing completely safe. The main vulnerability of any system is the human factor. To protect yourself from the hidden miner, you first need to carefully look at what sites you visit, what you download and install on your computer.

Post Author: MizOne

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