Android users fall prey to malicious miners again

Cybercriminals are again attacking users of Android mobile devices using the notorious Monero Coinhive cryptocurrency mining script. This time, in order to keep users on their page longer, they offer them to solve the captcha.

According to Malwarebytes, scammers have been using this scheme since November last year. They attract users to pages with malicious code by placing their advertisements on other sites on the network.

Users are prompted to enter captcha, which is sometimes difficult to do because of the inconvenience of the keyboard on mobile devices. This feature is used by cybercriminals, loading the processors of their victims by 100% for mining Monero.

Photo: blog.malwarebytes.com

It is noteworthy that solving the captcha does not give the desired result – users are simply redirected to the Google home page.

Researchers found 5 domains used in the campaign, each hosting the same page with the same captcha. According to their estimates, all five pages are visited on average by 800,000 users per day, staying on them for 4 minutes.

“It’s hard to say how much cryptocurrency the organizers were able to get without knowing for sure how many domains (and traffic) they have,” the company explained. “Due to the low hash rate and limited time on the page, we assume that the whole scheme can only bring in a few thousand dollars a month.”.

Recall that it was previously found that the most aggressive cryptocurrency miners can cause serious overheating of mobile devices and even swelling of batteries, which requires their subsequent replacement..

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