- A report reveals that Russia tops the list of countries affected by cryptocurrency threats, followed by Thailand and Peru.
- The report reveals that the surge was due to the increased number of potentially unwanted applications known as Nice Hash Miner
The price of Bitcoin has always correlated with ransomware attacks. In May 2019, when Bitcoin was making a rebound at $5350, a spate of attacks struck the US cities. In response, the spokesman of Emisoft, Brett Callow stated that there appears to be a correlation between high-profile ransomware incidents and the Bitcoin price. According to a new report, the recent surge of cryptocurrency threats is attributed to Bitcoin going mainstream. Interestingly, Russia has been the most targeted country followed by Thailand and Peru.
The countries most affected by cryptocurrency threats were Russia, where ESET telemetry saw 8.9% of such attacks, followed by Thailand and Peru, with 5.6% and 5.3% of detections, respectively.
The report revealed that cryptocurrency threats became dominant in the second half of 2020 through to the first half of 2021. The malware category saw an 18 percent surge with two smaller spikes in cryptominers in February and April 2021. The ESET Telemetry data discloses that cryptominers were the driving force behind the rise of cryptocurrency threat with a 22 percent growth in January to April 2021 compared to the surge in September to December 2020.
The report reveals that the surge was due to the increased number of potentially unwanted applications known as Nice Hash Miner. Cryptomining was closely related to cryptojacking which entails the use of a victim’s computer to mine cryptocurrency without their knowledge. While there was a huge spike in cryptominers, there was a considerable decrease of cryptostealers with a 28 percent drop from the last four months of 2020 to the first four months of 2021.
“Correlation does not mean causation”
Roman Kovac, chief research officer at ESET asserted that rising ransomware attacks are tied to rising crypto demand.
One could say ‘fortunately,’ yet as you’ll see in our report, we are continuing to see worrying examples of cybercrooks rapidly abusing trending vulnerabilities and configuration flaws with a focus on achieving high returns on investment.
The volume lost for web-threat detection was 25 percent in the last four months of 2020. Interestingly, there was a downward movement by 29 percent in the first four months of 2021 according to the report. Web threats labeled as phishing only saw a 10 percent reduction between the last four months of 2020 and the first four months of 2021.
Kovac further mentioned that some of the continued attacks by brute-force attackers were the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP), cryptocurrency threat, and the increase of Android banking malware detection. Callow has clarified that correlation does not mean causation. Attackers may just be interested in taking advantage of the high price of Bitcoin.
Guillermo Suarez-Tangil, Informatics lecturer at King’s College London stated that criminals are sending important income to the underground economy with the commoditization of cybercrime.
Ransomware is just one of the many elements in which criminals introduce crypto-capital.
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