YouTube users are concerned that their devices are slowing down while watching videos on the site because the advertisements have been hijacked by Coinhive code.
Despite the recent drop in cryptocurrency prices, people's desire to mine it has not decreased one iota. In fact, many are looking for methods to help improve mining efficiency. One of the methods that hackers practice is the notorious Coinhive code, known for its ability to inject itself into websites. Now it has infected advertising widgets on YouTube and many users of this resource are unhappy that their devices are being used for crypto mining.
Everyone who uses YouTube knows how annoying advertising is there. Most of it plays before the video starts, but some appears right in the middle of the video. These videos are annoying, but until today, at least they just stole your time and nothing more. The ad infected with the code was placed on the Google DoubleClick platform. The ad contains JavaScript that will start mining Monero cryptocurrency using Coinhive. Many users noticed that their computer began to work at 80% of its processing power.
Independent security researcher Troy Mursch believes: “The attackers chose YouTube as a target because people usually spend a lot of time on this site. And this is the main criterion for such malware, since the more time a user spends on a site, the more money it brings to hackers.
Immediately after information about such advertisements was published, Google employees posted an official statement stating:
“ Mining cryptocurrencies with the help of advertising - A relatively new form of hacking. In this case, the malicious ads were blocked in less than two hours and the attackers were removed from our platforms. The endless war between Internet security and hackers continues. Today, the reality is that the number of such attempts to mine cryptocurrency using other people's devices is likely to only increase. As long as cryptocurrencies have significant value, and punishing attackers remains an incredibly difficult task, the number of such cases will not decrease.”
According to http://bitcoinist.com
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