Symantec has released its 23rd internet security threat report which says that there have been more attacks associated with cryptocurrency. The report says that the crypto jacking was the largest trending attack of 2017 in which computer system is used to mine the cryptocurrency though the owner of the machine remains unaware of it. There are two easy benefits for the attacker. One is that great deal of anonymity is maintained and other that regular CPUs can be used to mine the coin, unlike bitcoin which needs specialized equipment.
All the cyber criminals resorted to cryptocurrency because their price shoots up in 2017. So there was a lot of profitability for the cybercriminal. In addition to that criminal need just a few lines of code to mine the currency. The report mentions ransomware as another major online attack resorted to in 2017. In this hackers make the system non-functional and then they demand money, usually in the form of cryptocurrency, to unlock the system. These kinds of incidents are increasing day by day. In 2018, already such kind of attack has been made on the city of Atlanta. These attacks are only going to increase in the year 2018.
