The users of YouTube have reportedly been targeted by hackers. The hackers are mining cryptocurrencies like bitcoin by attacking the computers via the advertising service of the video platform, states the report. It was noticed last week when YouTube users reported their anti-virus software getting triggered every time they watched the YouTube advertisements. YouTube is owned by Google.
Later mining codes, known as CoinHive, were found in those advertisements. These caused the malware attack by secretly getting 80% of visitors’ computer’s CPUs busy while mining cryptocurrencies for anonymous hackers.
Cryptocurrencies can be traded for money. New coins of online money are digitally mined. The mining procedure of the currencies consumes a lot of computer power. The hackers are stealing power from hacked computers and miming the money for themselves.
Google has assured the users and has promised to monitor its advertising service very closely. They are concerned about this malware used by the hackers trying to mine digital currencies.
We enforce our policies through a multi-layered detection system across our platforms which we update as new threats emerge. In this case, the ads were blocked in less than two hours and the malicious actors were quickly removed from our platforms. – Google
The cyber attacks are analyzed by Trend Micro, the renowned antivirus provider. The results show that the countries with the highest risk of being attacked are shortlisted. In a blog on their website, they have published a list that includes names like Japan, France, Taiwan, Italy, and Spain as the most affected countries.
We have already disclosed our findings to Google. We detected an almost 285 per cent increase in the number of Coin Hive miners on January 24. We started seeing an increase in traffic to five malicious domains on January 18. After closely examining the network traffic, we discovered that the traffic came from DoubleClick advertisements. – Trend Micro
The popularity of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ripple, and Ethereum have increased enormously in the last year. The number of people trying to mine the currency had increased accordingly, which in turn has increased the amount of cyber hacking involved.
