19 September 2018
YAHOO (AFP) — Illicit cryptocurrency mining has been surging over the past year, in part due to a leaked software tool from the US National Security Agency, researchers said Wednesday.
A report by the Cyber Threat Alliance, an association of cybersecurity firms and experts, said it detected a 459 percent increase in the past year of illicit crypto mining — a technique used by hackers to steal the processing power of computers to create cryptocurrency.
“Activity has gone from a virtually non-exist issue to one that almost universally shows up at the top of our members’ threat lists,” said a blog post by Neil Jenkins, chief analytic officer for the alliance.
One reason for the sharp rise was the leak last year by a group of hackers known as the Shadow Brokers of “EternalBlue,” software developed by the NSA to exploit vulnerabilities in the Windows operating system. […]
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