Palo Alto Networks, a networking security company has release a report which potentially have destabilizing undercurrents. The report was based on a research conducted by the company and was released on 11 June.
The findings suggested that nearly five percent of all Monero (XMR) in circulation was mined through a malware in its algorithm.
The report implied that the mining was done through cryptojacking. Cryptojacking is a malpractice. It involves the use of the processing powers of many computers without the permission of the owners of those systems. It essentially is a theft of the processing power in same tradition of the Botnets.
The data which was collected by Josh Grunzweig included almost 469,000 unique samples. These were the samples which were identified within the company’s wildfire platform to be involved in cryptojacking.
The findings included 3773 emails joint with mining pools alongwith nearly 3000 mining pools URLs and 2350 Monero wallets. The report find that the Monero has a unique share of the total cryptocurrencies targeted by the malware.
It is to be noted that 175 million USD of the XMR is mined via cryptojacking. This amount is almost 5% of the entire XMR in circulation at the time of the writing.
The data has some significant fact gapes in its analysis. The report begins with incomplete input information as it excludes web base mining operations. So the estimate of 5 % might be too small a number.
In order to counter the widespread practice of cryptojacking, the Monero malware Response Workgroup is being formed. They are dedicated to educating the crypto community on how to avoid malware and cryptojacking.
The Japanese Police has already launched an investigation into a case of Monero cryptojacking. This case involved the use of a Coinhive mining software. There was a recent finding which suggested that almost 40,000 computer systems were infected with mining malwares.