UAE’s crypto miners fell victim to ‘cryptojacking’

Despite the liquidity crisis in the crypto sector, criminal activity targeting the crypto industry does not seem to be slowing down, Gulf News reported. The UAE cryptominers must beware of ‘cryptojackers,’ as 11% of all corporate users affected by ‘cryptojackers’ in the META region this year were from the UAE.

According to cybersecurity and anti-virus experts Kaspersky’s new research paper ‘The state of cryptojacking in 2022,’ researchers saw a sharp increase in illegal crypto miner variants in Q3 2022 – an overall growth of over 230% compared to last year. The number is three times more than in Q3 2021 and now exceeds 150,000.

11% of all corporate users affected by crypto miners in the META region were from the UAE. And of all consumers affected by crypto miners in the META region, 6% were also from the UAE. 

Cybercriminals use the processing power of the victim’s computer to mine cryptocurrency, with an income reaching up to $40.500 (2 BTC) per month.

“Making money using crypto miners is profitable for cybercriminals – they don’t pay for equipment or electricity, which is rather expensive in 2022. They install mining software on the victim’s computer to use its processing power without the user’s consent,” say researchers at Kaspersky. “Although these are not the best days for the cryptocurrency industry, the topic has been in the spotlight throughout the year, so it’s not surprising that malicious actors would want to profit from these trends.”

When the crypto mining malware is installed successfully on the victim’s computer, it provides its operator with steady earnings. This year saw a sharp increase in new modifications to malicious mining programs with open-source code.

Over the first three quarters of 2022, the experts identified 215,843 new miners, more than two-fold as last year. 48% of the analyzed samples of malicious mining software secretly mine Monero (XMR) cryptocurrency, known for its advanced technologies that anonymize transaction data to achieve maximum privacy.

Usually, attackers distribute miners through malicious files masquerading as pirated content, such as films, games, music, and software. Meanwhile, unpatched vulnerabilities also pose a severe challenge to users while being an appealing lure for cybercriminals.

As earlier reported, this August, the Solana ecosystem suffered a multimillion-dollar hack, with users reporting that their funds have been drained silently from major internet-connected “hot” wallets, including Phantom, Slope, and TrustWallet. So far, at least 8,000 wallets have been affected, with about $8 million lost, but the source of the attack remains unknown.