Coinhive, A Digital Currency Mining Service, Going Out Of Business
Scroll DownOn February 26, digital currency mining service Coinhive announced in a post on their blog that they would soon be shutting down their service because it is no longer viable. The service will officially cease operations on March 8 of this year, though users will still have access to their dashboards until the end of April. Coinhive listed a number of reasons for why they are ceasing operations. First of all, they noted how — after the recent hard fork of Monero — the currency's hash rate had more than halved. Another reason they gave was the market decline of Monero, which over the last year has lost 85% of its value. The final nail in their coffin was supposedly an algorithmic update to Monero that is scheduled to occur one day after Coinhive ceases operations. Coinhive functions through JavaScript code that people install on their web pages. When users then load the page in a browser, their computers mine Monero for the benefit of the page owner. Though Coinhive is not exactly malware, some unscrupulous people have committed what is known as cryptojacking using the code. That is, mining without user consent. Just this month, Microsoft removed more than a half-dozen apps from their app store after cybersecurity giant Symantec determined that the apps were surreptitiously using Coinhive to mine Monero without users' consent. A month earlier, Check Point, which is an Israeli cybersecurity company, issued its Global Threat Index for December of last year. The company stated that the top 3 malware strains were all using Coinhive for the purposes of cryptojacking. This marked the 13th consecutive month in which a Coinhive-related piece of malware had held the top spot in the rankings. Kaspersky Labs, which is another leading cybersecurity company, recently released a report in which it stated that cryptojacking was the biggest cybersecurity threat facing computer users today, surpassing ransomware. The company said that the problem was especially problematic in Africa, Turkey and other countries in the Middle East. Cryptojacking targets not only computers but also smartphones. Such attacks increased by nearly 10% between 2016 and 2018.
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