Crypto jackers use your computer or smartphone to mine a cryptocurrency using malware.

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• Crypto jackers mine cryptocurrency on your computer without you knowing
• This can happen via your browser and without the need for any additional malware
• There are easy ways to spot and prevent crypto jacking

In this lesson, you will learn about the danger of crypto jacking.

The mining of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is as energy and processing power consuming as it is lucrative. So it was just a matter of time until the shadier people online came up with ways to unknowingly abuse other users’ computers on the internet for their own financial gain. This practice is called crypto jacking - a fitting term to describe the combination of cryptocurrency and hijacking

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What happens while you are being crypto jacked is that your computer provides private processing power and energy to crypto jackers mining crypto without you even knowing it.

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How does crypto jacking work?

Understanding crypto jacking is pretty simple: You visit a website and while you are there browsing the site, a malware script starts running in the background. This is usually just some basic lines of JavaScript code, which will then use your computer or smartphone to mine a cryptocurrency like the CPU-heavy, anonymity-focused Monero.

What happens while you are being crypto jacked is that your computer provides private processing power and energy to crypto jackers mining crypto with your resources without you even knowing it. There have also been reports of infected Chrome browser extensions, which have already been removed from the Chrome Web Store.

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How can I protect myself against crypto jacking?

Browser-based crypto jacking is pretty easy to contend with, as you just need to install free browser extensions like minerBlock (Chrome) or No Coin (Chrome and Firefox) to stop it in its tracks.

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Some people regard legitimate, voluntary mining of cryptocurrency in a browser as an alternative monetisation model, which could potentially replace ads on websites.

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Is cryptocurrency mining in a browser always a bad thing?

No, it is not. In fact, some people regard legitimate, voluntary mining of cryptocurrency in a browser as an alternative monetisation model, which could potentially replace ads on websites.

For example, users could choose if they want to see ads or knowingly contribute a small portion of their processing power to mine a specific cryptocurrency as payment for avoiding ads. The same applies for charitable organisations, which could, for example, collect donations by asking visitors to install an application or stay on their website.