Process by which new digital currency is created is known as Mining. In this, computer’s processing power is used to solve difficult cryptographic puzzles. The more puzzles a computer can solve, more the rewards earned. Crypto-mining can slow down user's computer as they use their CPU/GPU processing power. In some cases the computer can die-out due to overheating caused by crypto-mining.
Cryptojacking is a new security threat these days. It is defined as the secret use of your computing device to mine cryptocurrency. What happens is, upon visiting some websites they runs a Javascript on user's browser and mines Cryptocoins. This effects user's computers by using their CPU's power and data thus slowing down their machine's performance. This process consumes more electricity costing the targeted user. Most of these websites mine Monero as it is easy to mine using raw CPU power.
Nearly 2500 sites are using cryptojacking and this number keeps increasing day by day. Cryptojacking is conducted by 220 out of the top 1,000 websites in the world, thus resulting in a total of US$43,000 over a period of three weeks.
We can prevent our computers from being targeted by these cryptojacking sites by using few extensions like "No Coin" and "minerBlock" in our browsers.
1) Browser-based cryptocurrency miners on the web are blocked by "MinerBlock" browser extension. The extension uses two different types of approaches to block miners.
- Blocking requests/scripts loaded from a blacklist.
- The other approach is detecting potential mining behavior inside loaded scripts and killing it immediately.
This enables the extension to block inline scripts and miners running through proxies.
2) Coin miners such as Coinhive are blocked by "No coin" browser extension. It features an easy way to allow miners for a limited time in case you need to pass a captcha or shortlink requiring mining.
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