Cryptojacking Explained: How To Protect Your Business From Hidden Mining Attacks

In 2022, crytpojacking attacks reached a total of $139 million. By 2023, this number had increased a staggering $332 million in first half of the year alone.

By country, the US, Europe, Germany and the UK saw some of the most significant increases in carjacking.

Apparently, cybercriminals are not backing down, so you need to protect your business from cryptojacking. Before we dive deeper into how to prevent cryptojacking attacks on businesses, let’s discuss what the term actually means.

What Is Cryptojacking?

Picture a gang with each member siphoning just a liter of gas from a single car but doing so for thousands of cars. The car drivers would hardly notice that such as a small amount of gas was taken from them without their permission. 

Then the gang members pool the liters together to collect thousands of liters at once which would be sold. They would end up making huge profits without the notice of those they stole from. This is a simple way of thinking about what happens with cryptojacking.

So, cryptojacking is a cyber attack where a hacker fnds a way to use victims’ devices, for instance computers, to mine cryptocurrencies without the victims’ permission or knowledge.

Why Do Hackers Carry Out Such Attacks?

Cryptocurrency mining involves individuals creating new blocks to be added into the crypto’s blockchain. The process requires a lot of computing power and resources. People who provide these computing power are rewarded in cryptocurrency and are called miners.

Crypto mining, especially for established crypto options like Bitcoin, demands a huge amount of electricity. As such cryptojacking allows hackers to pull the computing power and resources from thousands or millions of devices, earning the rewards for themselves.

How Cryptojacking Affects Businesses

Cryptojacking does not steal any information, but it uses the victims’ resources to mine crypto. Therefore, when your business resources are attacked you may experience indirect and direct losses. 

Some of the losses include:

• Increased electricity consumption
• Tear and wear of processing cores
• Lowering efficiency of computing workload needed for important functions
• Programs and apps may crash 
• Affect employee efficiency

How To Discover Cryptojacking Attack on Your Business?

Cryptojacking is often made to appear as normal and standard procedures or behavior. For instance, an employee gets an email that looks like one they would receive from HR asking them to click on a link. This makes it quite challenging to discover suspicious activities. But it is not impossible.

Here are a few ways to detect cryptojacking:

• Central processing unit usage: Checking CPU usage through Activity Monitor or Task Manager can help detect if the CPU is overused. For example, if you visit a site with little to no content but CPU usage increases, it might indicate cryptojacking.
• Overheating: resource-intensive processes often result in overheating of devices. This causes damage to computers, shortening the lifespans. A fan that runs faster, for example, could be an indication of cryptojacking.
• Decreased performance: cryptojacking will generally slow down the performance of computing devices. Slower systems, poor performance and crashes may be indicators of crytptojacking.

Ways To Protect Business From Cryptojacking

Although stopping the attacks from the start can be challenging, there are measures that can be taken to ensure you protect the business from cryptojacking. 

Here are a few ways to protect your devices and business:

1. Cybersecurity Software

Some cybersecurity software has the capacity to prevent and solve cryptojacking. If your business relies heavily on the use of computers, it is advisable to implement comprehensive cybersecuity solutions. Also, the software should be patched and updated to eliminate vulnerabilities.

2. Use of Anti-Cryptocurrency Mining Extensions and Ad Blockers

Often, cryptojacking scripts are hidden in web browsers or online ads. Extensions that protect against cryptomining activities and ad blockers can effectively protect your devices from malicious attacks. 

3. Disable JavaScript

When surfing the internet, you may need some functions provided for by JavaScript. But, this also makes your device vulnerable to cryptojacking. Whenever possible, if you don’t need the functions, it would be advisable to disable JavaScript for a while to protect your device from cryptojacking.

4. Stay Updated on Cryptojacking Trends

Cryptojacking being one of the newest type of cyberattack, you need to regularly conduct research to stay updated on trends and new developments. The more one is informed on cryptojacking, or indeed any blockchain-based security threats, the lower the likelihood of becoming a victim.

Conclusion

Cyberattacks are on the rise and we need to protect our business from cryptojacking.

Some cryptojacking protection tips include educating employees, using anti-cryptomining extensions, disabling JavaScript and using ad blockers. 

Remember to stay up to date to notice new trends in cyber crimes and cryptojacking. This may go a long way in helping you protect your business from attacks.