People have already known that there are many websites that secretly use others’ CPU to mine cryptocurrency. They also know that after closing the browser, it stops mining. But they don’t know, recently it is found in a research that mining still continues even if browsers are closed. In order to mint digital coin, users generally use mining software while some users, you can say hackers, add mining codes on their websites so that they can use other users’ CPU to mine cryptocurrency while visiting their sites.
The above gif is showing the performance of CPU usage even after the browsers are closed.
There are some websites such as The Pirate Bay and CBS’s Show Times that have already been caught mining Monero digital coin adding JavaScript code on their websites. In this scenario users know that mining stops once they close their browsers. But in a recent study, researchers found that the mining can be continued even after you close your browser. It can be possible with the help of a new technique called “Persistent drive-by cryptomining”.
A research was conducted by some researchers, in which they found, CPU usage was higher while visiting the websites that secretly mine cryptocurrency. But the interesting matter was that the CPU usage was still showing higher even after the browsers were closed. It proved that mining code were still working and using users’ CPU power to mint digital coin.
According to the blog post by Malwarebytes’ Jérôme Segura, “The trick is that although the visible browser windows are closed, there is a hidden one that remains opened. This is due to a pop-under which is sized to fit right under the taskbar and hides behind the clock. The hidden window’s coordinates will vary based on each user’s screen resolution, but follow this rule: Horizontal position = ( current screen x resolution ) – 100 Vertical position = ( current screen y resolution ) – 40.”
“This type of pop-under is designed to bypass adblockers and is a lot harder to identify because of how cleverly it hides itself. Closing the browser using the “X” is no longer sufficient. The more technical users will want to run Task Manager to ensure there is no remnant running browser processes and terminate them. Alternatively, the taskbar will still show the browser’s icon with slight highlighting, indicating that it is still running,” added Segura.
In my opinion, it is a great threat to internet users, because it may hike their electricity bill. So there should be some solutions to stop these malware activities.
Read more news here: https://www.hackread.com/websites-use-cpu-mine-cryptocurrency-even-close/