Microsoft Cautions about Employees Using Crypto-Miners on Enterprise Computers

Microsoft is warning businesses about a dangerous threat lurking on the Web. This is the coin-mining Trojans attacking in massive volumes on Windows computers the recent 6 months around the globe.

According to Eric Avena, Michael Johnson and Alden Pornasdoro, researchers at Microsoft's Windows Defender, during the period September 2017 to January 2018, a mean 644,000 PCs potentially contracted infection from coin-mining malware. Of late, Microsoft effectively thwarted one crypto-mining assault which hit over 400,000 PCs.

Coincidentally, when Trojans mining crypto-currencies and crypto-jacking through browsers are on the rise there's been a downward trend of ransomware infections. The crypto-miner types of malware can be seen penetrating enterprise networks too. No matter if some malicious attacker else some harmful employee that seeks for earning some extra cash is using the malware programs they're now a severe problem facing IT staff of companies. Techrepublic.com posted this on the Web dated March 13, 2018.

As such, there is nothing malicious about crypto-currency as well as its mining unless they're utilized in criminal monetary deals so convenient because of their anonymity. A lot of IT professionals are inclined to consider crypto-miners a nuisance; nevertheless, one requires treating them carefully since they consume valuable computing resources. The result is 'wear and tear' of computer hardware at enterprises while causing employees problems in production. With criminals diverting to other methods such as crypto-mining, ransomware assaults have been declining.

Telling ZDNet, a spokesperson from Microsoft said the company might soon disclose in what manner exactly Dofoil was proliferated; however, observed that some correlation existed between certain Internet download and file sharing software. Malware researchers at Microsoft further regard employees' use of illegitimate miners on enterprise machines as posing another danger.

The software giant categorizes unauthorized miners that company workforce install on powerful machines as PUAs (potentially unwanted applications) that maybe more difficult to spot compared to their Trojan equivalents should they be set for functioning below a specified limit.

IT professionals need identifying legitimate crypto-miners as PUAs which they can then highlight as dangerous, while Trojanized miners are categorized as malicious programs that Microsoft's security products would automatically identify as well as block.

» SPAMfighter News - 3/19/2018