Reader Advisory

Some articles posted in The SlickMaster's Files may contain themes, languages, and content which may neither appropriate nor appealing to certain readers. READER DISCRETION is advised.

Wednesday, June 10, 2020

Newsletter: Over 1M detections in Q1 2020: What are malicious miners and why SMBs in SEA should care?

06/04/2020 10:42:18 PM



Author's note: One of the latest news pieces from Kaspersky involve malicious miners that targetting the small and medium businesses based in Southeast Asia. For over a quarter in 2020, the global anti-cyberattack company has managed to amass 1 million detections and blocking 12 percent of them.

More of that in this press release. Read the entire story below.



*****

Several studies from Kaspersky have since revealed that companies are concerned about data breaches and ransomware. However, fresh statistics from the global cybersecurity company unmasks that the biggest threat in Southeast Asian small and medium businesses (SMBs) are not those two, but miners.

Just in the first three months of 2020, Kaspersky solutions have foiled over 1 million mining attempts against devices of businesses in Southeast Asia (SEA) with 20-250 employees. This is 12% more compared with 949,592 mining incidents blocked in the same period last year.

The total number of miners detected in Q1 is also significantly more than the 834,993 phishing attempts and 269,204 ransomware detections against SMBs in the region.

“We cannot refute the fact that malicious mining is far less destructive compared with ransomware, data breaches, and the like but it remains a risk that SMBs should consider seriously. Cybercriminals behind these attacks are using your own resources, from your electricity, your data bandwidth, to your devices’ hardware which are not cheap at all,” comments Yeo Siang Tiong, general manager for Southeast Asia at Kaspersky. “Our previous study even found out that two days’ straight of mining cryptocurrency using mobile mining malware can leave an infected device’s battery bloated to the point of physically deforming the phone. Think footing the bill without eating the meal, that’s how illegal miners work.”





Malicious mining, also known as cryptojacking, are attacks that can inflict both direct and indirect losses for a business. Cryptocurrency miners that infect the computers of unsuspecting users essentially operate according to the same business model as ransomware programs: the victim’s computing power is harnessed to enrich the cybercriminals.

Aside from a substantial increase in electrical consumption and usage of CPU, mining increases the wear and tear on hardware by having processing cores, including those belonging to discrete graphics cards, working overtime to mine ill-gotten cryptocurrency. The wasted bandwidth also decreases the speed and efficiency of legitimate computing workloads. Moreover, a cryptojacking malware can overwhelm a system, causing severe performance problems, which will have an immediate effect on businesses' networks and ultimately, their customers.

Kaspersky’s data further reveals that Indonesia and Vietnam were among the countries in SEA and globally with the highest number of mining attempts against SMBs. Most of the six countries in the region, except the Philippines and Thailand, have also recorded an increase in terms of this malware’s detection in the first quarter of 2020.
.
Author: slickmaster | © 2020 The SlickMaster's Files

No comments:

Post a Comment

Feel free to make a comment as long as it is within the bounds of the issue, and as long as you do it with decency. Thanks!