Be on the lookout for Bitcoin bandits

IT’S A gold rush that is turning computers into moneymaking machines, and the owners have no idea it’s happening.

Across South Africa, criminals are hacking into computers so they can use them to mine cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. It’s known as cryptojacking.

Experts have recently noticed a marked rise in the crime as cyber prospectors try to cash in on the bitcoin craze.

Jacques van Heerden, chief executive of Global Technology Security Provider, said he knew of at least three compan- ies that have been hit. Banks have been targeted, too.

“It’s happening in banks as their computers have a lot of processing power,” said Van Heerden.

Cryptocurrencies are mined by a complicated process that involves transactions which are verified and then added to the public ledger known as the block chain. Mining is a process of compiling transactions into blocks and then trying to solve a puzzle. The rewards are newly released cybercurrency, but to solve this puzzle requires a huge computing power.

Cryptojackers are getting round this by hacking into and then harnessing the power of large groups of computers.

They do this, Van Heerden says, by planting a mining app on the PC. “That mining app will then run on the local PC that got compromised, and it will send all the cryptocurrency that it mined to an anonymous bitcoin wallet.”

Cyber investigators have also noted that IT personnel are using their own company computers to mine bitcoin, says Cyanre chief executive Danny Myburgh.

He stressed that cyptojackers are breaking the law because they are hacking into a PC they don’t own and are using the data.

There are other dangers too. “It makes these computers susceptible to an external attack because if anyone scans the network and sees there is bitcoin mining going on, that could paint a target on an organisation,” said Myburgh.

Van Heerden said that a way of finding out if a computer is being covertly used to mine cybercurrencies is to see if the central processing unit is over-working.

“In a normal computer it should be working at between 10 and 40%. Where there is mining it will be running at 70% and above.”