Monero (XRM) Becomes a Victim of Malware Mining

Monero unwillingly became a part of another fiasco, after a short crisis of having the majority of currencies trading in the red for a couple of days as a part of the latest market trend.

Even though we can see a great portion of currencies going up while acquiring minor rises after approximately four days of trading in the red with the plummeting market, Monero can’t seem to take a breath as it is trading in the red.

Although there are a couple of top coins that are also going down in the market as well as Monero in the current moment, XRM might have a solid good reason for having its value going down while trading in the red – the most recent case of malware mining that was discovered to the public a couple of days ago.

Monero Gets Victimized by a Mining Malware

A security researcher, named Troy Mursch, has recently announced that there was a mining malware program known as Coinhive, ravaging the mining pool of Monero. Apparently, the researcher has discovered suspicious activity related to Monero’s mining pool, which made Mursch believe that there was something wrong. Unfortunately, he was right about the existing issue.

The malware known under the non-suspicious name of Coinhive has been noted while creeping around over 400 websites that the malware used for illegal activities related to mining XRM.

The mining malware was actively hunting for victims across the list of websites that would be naturally considered to be safe for visitors and users, so the affected websites were web spots like San Diego Zoo and Lenovo. However, the list of affected sites goes even further.

For full transparency of this case and to notify all potential victims, Mursch has also released the list of affected websites where the activity of the initial mining malware was noted during the research.

What might be a terrifying case about having this mining malware actively disrupting Monero’s mining system is the fact that the majority of the affected websites were related to government and education, which made all the affected parties deeply unsuspecting considering that these websites have high authority on Google, presumably having a good solid security as well.

Another interesting thing regarding this case of crypto jacking is the fact that the most of the affected websites were all hosted by Amazon web hosting services, so Munsch could presume that the mining malware could find its way around security due to the outdated Drupal, which is an open-source CMS platform.

Munsch further added that he was able to trace the malware called Coinhive as it could be found in the JavaScript library. He further discovered that the malware was implemented into the system if the infected sites in the same manner, so it is presumed that the fault lies in the outdated Drupal.

Although the spotted malware isn’t malicious for the affected user in the form of disrupting the computer system of the victim, it is forcing the victim into using its CPU for mining Monero without the victim being aware of the fact.

Now that the malware has been spotted, the mentioned websites are working on preventing this problem in the future, while the price of XRM is dropping, partially due to this most recently discovered case of malware mining Monero.

How is Monero doing at the Current Moment?

After having the majority of the circulating currencies going up against the dollar after dropping for around four days in a row, the market seems to be collectively plummeting once again.

In addition to having the majority of currencies dropping once again with rarely having any of the top coins going up against the dollar, Monero is following up with the trend, which means that XRM is going down in its price as well.

After the latest change in the market, XRM has gone down for -13.9% (in last 24 hours) against the dollar while trading in the red at the time of this writing on May 10^th.

Following the latest change in the market, Monero can be currently purchased at the price of 200.088$ per one unit. Monero set its all-time high back at the beginning of January when this currency could be traded at the price of around 494$, trying to break the value of 500$ in which it failed once the market dip took place a couple of weeks later.

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Disclaimer: This article should not be taken as, and is not intended to provide, investment advice. Global Coin Report and/or its affiliates, employees, writers, and subcontractors are cryptocurrency investors and from time to time may or may not have holdings in some of the coins or tokens they cover. Please conduct your own thorough research before investing in any cryptocurrency and read our full disclaimer.

Image courtesy of Christoph Scholz via Flickr