Secure Yourself From Cryptojacking
Cryptojacking, a word i have never thought existed, but it really did. My landlord complained this afternoon that his phone gets overheated even when he is not using it, and sometimes it lags. My landlord is in his early 60's, still strong and agile. One of his daughters bought him an android phone two weeks ago, baba was very happy that he has finally joined the gang of android phone users. He never knew that there is more in just owning one, he never thought of the money he will be spending on data subscription, regular app updates, freeing up space for new things, and other issues related to maintenance of smartphones. Since he had people like me around, he never bothered about those things. For the past few days now, i personally have spent some good time with him trying to show him how to use the phone. He never cared to read the owners manual, he just wanted someone to show him.
I was tempted to introduce him to this platform, but no, he wouldn't buy such idea...hahaha. The only thing he was so concerned about was how to search the internet for news, i did my best to showed him how to use google, and he was getting every bit of the lesson. Fast forward to this afternoon when he called me to check the phone that it gets hot even when he is not using it..........i still can't remember the day i introduced myself to this man as a phone technician. He adviced me to remove the battery and insert it back, but unfortunately the phone has a non-removable battery.
I later adviced him to call his daughter so she can take the phone to the store where she bought it, it's not up to a month and the phone is already malfunctioning. But i never stopped there, i went back to my room and did some searches on the internet to find out the reason why the phone is having such problem. I saw some few reasons, but one of them caught my attention ' CRYPTOJACKING'. Immediately a question popped up in my head, Can this be the cause of the sudden overheating in my landlord's phone? Before now he use to complain that when he is reading a particular news, something like a message will pop up on the screen and he will click on it, it will take him completely away from what he was doing.
I went ahead to read more on what cryptojacking is all about, and the few things i saw, had a kind of resemblance to what my landlord is going through. I can't conclude on it yet until a phone technician diagnose the phone and know exactly what is the problem. But until then, lets get more aware of what cryptojacking is all about and how to avoid it.
Cryptocurrency over the years has gained so much attention both good and the bad. But that's not stopping it from getting popular and accepted by people and the world as a whole. And because of the rapid change and advancement in the digital world, hackers have now come up with new means on how to get innocent people into their trap, and one of this ways is through cryptojacking.
Cryptojacking is nothing close to being good, it is a kind of dangerous cyberattack on another persons device without the knowledge of the person involved. This attack leads to the installation of a malicious code in the victims device, and the moment this codes are installed, it silently mine cryptocurrencies and forward them to the hackers crypto wallets. No matter what happens, the victim is never aware that some cryptos are mining in their devices. If not checked, this attack can be going on for a prolonged period of time on the device. This mining usually happens in the background of the victims device.
And this attack normally result in the targeted device having less power, overheats, lags, and poor or slower performance. And if the victims are not aware of what is really causing all of this on their device, they will blame either the company that produced the phone, but they are wrong. They never knew that some hackers out there are using their device to earn some cryptocurrencies overtime.
During my research, i got to find out that this hackers use two mediums to get to its victims. It's either through browsing the web, or sending mining malware to their victims.
The web browsing medium. Malicious codes are not needed in this kind of attack. The hackers build their own websites and insert some of the cryptocurrencies mining codes in it. Each time a user of the internet visits any of this websites or clicks on the pop up ads on their browser, it redirects them immediately to the website, and automatically the mining process begins. This mining will continue until the user finally exit that website before it stops. Hackers don't really use this method often. The solely depend on the mining malware to get what they want.
Mining malware medium. Hackers that operates more on this attacks users who drop some of their personal information on sites that are not secured. The steal peoples emails, and phone number, then send malicious emails, and text messages which contains harmful cryptoworms. It is advicable to know the kind of forms you fill online, and the emails and messages you open on your phone. If you don't trust the source, or sense that something is not right, delete the mails, or messages immediately. The moment the victim clicks on those malicious mails and messages, the cryptoworms will launch and start running silently on the background. It takes so much time for it to get noticed.
You are responsible for your own safety. To save yourself from this hackers and some of the problems of the digital world, you have to be aware of the kind of websites you visit, and the kinds of apps you install into your phones. If you don't trust a website, don't visit. And also if you don't trust the source you are installing apps from, don't go ahead a install the apps.
It takes a very long period of time before one can know if their device have been hacked by hackers for cryptojacking. One of the things you need to do to secure your device and yourself from this form of cyberattack is for you to install an anti-crypto mining on your device browsers. At least this will help protect you from them, above all don't ever click on links that you doubts, or phishing emails.
I hope your landlord will not click a link unknowingly that would affect his phone or even his account. These oldies need to be careful of clicking any links sent to them. These people are the hacker´s target because they know they are ignorant of things like this.