Allot Communications : Criminals Hacking CPUs to Mine Cryptocurrencies

Cryptocurrency hijacking, or 'cryptojacking' is one of the major threats faced by Enterprise IT teams today, and probably the most underestimated. Cryptojacking involves the covert, illegal use of targeted computing resources to mine cryptocurrencies. Cryptocurrency mining requires massive processing power to solve complex algorithms as part of the blockchain validation mechanism. This process also results in huge electricity consumption and cost as well as significantly shortening the life of expensive computer hardware. To provide a sense of scale, in the first eight months of 2017 alone, anti-virus provider Kaspersky Lab reported that it protected 1.65 million users from cryptojacking attacks.

The good news is that there are effective detection and mitigation mechanisms that can be integrated into an organization's cybersecurity lineup. Three major defenses against cryptojacking include Performance Management, Application Control, and Behavior Analysis. These rely on granular network visibility, which enables an enterprise to know what is going on in their network, at all times of the day.