Cryptojacking is becoming more common with every passing day. The latest development points to 50,000 websites running a cryptocurrency mining script.
According to a report published on Bad Packets, security researcher Troy Munsch said that 48,953 were running a mining script. He used a source code search engine, PublicWWW, to scan the interwebs for malicious crypto-jacking scripts.
About 7,368 of these sites were powered by WordPress.
Coinhive Everywhere
Troy mentioned that Coinhive was the most widespread crypto mining script, with 40,000 sites (81%) running the script.
This isn’t the first time Troy reported these sites. Back in November 2017, he discovered 30,000 sites running Coinhive mining scripts.
Alt Scripts
Other mining scripts (around 19% of total affected sites) included Coinhive alternatives like Minr, deepMiner, CoinImp, and Crypto-Loot.
Going into the nitty-gritty:
- Minr was found on 692 sites.
- 2,160 sites were running deepMiner.
- CoinImp was discovered on 4,119 websites.
- Crypto-Loot was running on 2,057 sites.
PIA and COMSATS Running Crypto-Jackers
Last month, a number of US government and other legitimate sites were found to be running crypto-jacking scripts. This also included PIA and COMSATS websites, which were running Coinhive’s crypto mining scripts.
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Troy notes that around 7,000 sites were discovered since January 20th this year. These are listed in a Pastebin document which can be found here.
The #cryptojacking campaign targeting #WordPress websites has now affected at least 7,368 sites.
The @publicww query used to find sites with the obfuscated #Coinhive code is discussed here:https://t.co/UnOe14kHKN
List of sites found since January 20:https://t.co/JFCgMiKouH
— Bad Packets by Okta (@bad_packets) March 6, 2018
The Pastebin file mentions that,
Some of these sites have already removed the crypto-jacking malware. However, many remain compromised. Browse at your own risk.
How to Check For And Avoid Mining Scripts
In case you’re wondering, there is a way to check for mining scripts lurking about on the internet. You can either check them manually by going to the suspect website and pressing Ctrl+Shift+Esc.
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Saving Yourself from Websites That Mine Cryptocurrency in Your Browser [Guide]
Click on the performance tab and check CPU usage. If it spikes to 90-100% then the website may be running a crypto mining script.
To protect yourself against the mining scripts, you can check out our guide linked above.
Via TheNextWeb
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