en
Back to the list

Mining viruses infect Apple Mac Store application

15 March 2018 21:00, UTC

Calendar 2, an application posted on Apple Mac Store and downloaded by thousands in reality was a tool of hackers. Using this simple app as a bait, they have infected it with a variation of Monero-mining software which transfers mined funds to the criminal group which enabled it in the first place.

This debunks a popular myth about Mac computers being more sustainable to cyber threats than PC, although nowadays it’s hard to find a device which has not been tried out as a mining tool. For instance, Android TV devices can be injected with a mining virus as well, as cybersecurity experts have already found out.

In probably the strangest occasion by far, Russian criminals decided to use the resources of special computers in a nuclear research center and some media outlets even tell the device they targeted was actually a supercomputer. They have not used the tools of remote mining similar to CoinHive, however.

The government of Egypt, as far as the messages from the media tell, secretly use the computers of citizens to get more coins for officials.

The next logical step in the evolution of mining viruses would probably be the infection of devices working on the IoT (Internet of Things) principle when it’s possible.