Cryptomining group earns £5 million in six months

A sophisticated hacker group earning millions through mining malware has been uncovered.

Overall, 2.7 million users were attacked by malicious miners in 2017, according to data from Kaspersky Lab - that marks an uplift of around 50 per cent on the 1.87 million recorded in 2016.

Based on Kaspersky Lab’s observations, one group mining Electroneum coins earned almost $7 million (£5.053 million) during the latter half of 2017, which is comparable to the sums earned by ransomware creators.

The cyber security software company believes that ransomware is fading into the background, giving way to miners.

Anton Ivanov, lead malware analyst at Kaspersky Lab, said cryptominers are using the same tricks as ransomware hackers when they were on the rise.

“Our statistics show a steady growth of miners throughout the year, as well as the fact that cybercriminal groups are actively developing their methods and have already started to use more sophisticated techniques to spread mining software,” he commented.