Each cryptocurrency creates its own mining ecosystem. The Bitcoin mining industry generates revenues of $6.8 billion a year.Īnd that’s just Bitcoin, which in one of many crypto currencies. At Bitcoin’s current exchange rate ($10,515 as of ), that’s around $130,000 paid to miners every 10 minutes, or $6.8bn per year. Very big business.Įvery 10 minutes, Bitcoin commits a new block of transactions to its ledger and awards 12.5 BTC to its miner. Miners, in turn, are incentivized the good old-fashioned way – cold hard cash.Ĭonsequentially, mining has become big business. The mathematical proof-of-work (PoW) that a miner has successfully solved the puzzle acts as the seal for the transaction.īy asking miners to solve complex cryptographic puzzles, the mining process intentionally requires resource-intensive computation. person or computer) to complete this complex calculation is awarded with some fresh and highly coveted coins. Sealing a block of transactions is akin to solving a complex puzzle, and the ledger itself is essentially a chain of sealed transaction blocks, otherwise known as a block-chain. Put briefly, using blockchain technology, crypto mining is the process of sealing new transactions into the crypto-currency’s public ledger. The map below shows the global distribution and prevalence of mining attacks detected by Check Point in December 2017. These attacks target organizations across the world. The chart below illustrates the alarming growth in the number of crypto-mining attacks. However, as Bitcoin and Monero values skyrocketed towards the end of 2017, the crypto-mining business became extremely lucrative. Mining attacks first emerged in 2011 as a relatively insignificant niche among other cyberattacks. By looking at the global threat landscape, we can clearly see that crypto mining attacks have been on the rise. Epidemic ProportionsĬheck Point’s threat intelligence database, ThreatCloud, draws data from over 80,000 Check Point gateways and millions of endpoints across the globe. They have targeted European water utilities, UK government websites, a Russian nuclear plant and even exploited a leaked NSA vulnerability. Like all hackers, crypto-miners are equal-opportunity attackers. The word “crypto-mining” indicates some form of association with crypto-currency – are they hackers that only target people or companies that own Bitcoin?

Spreading through Facebook Messenger and YouTube ads while infecting thousands of websites, the recent surge in crypto-mining attacks has been grabbing headlines. It’s difficult to not notice the recent surge in reports on crypto-mining attacks. Crypto-Mining Attacks and Their Impact On Businesses

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