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EDITOR’S QUESTION
RICHARD MEEUS, SECURITY
TECHNOLOGY AND STRATEGY
DIRECTOR AT AKAMAI
C
oin-mining malware isn’t a new
threat. Although it has received
increased attention over recent
months following the fluctuations in the
value of bitcoin and other digital currencies,
it has roots dating back to 2011. The term
‘coin-mining malware’ is used to refer to
malware that malicious actors use to install
coin miners onto users' systems, enabling
them to utilise the compromised systems'
computing resources for their own financial
gain. The rise of cryptocurrency value has
resulted in malicious actors doing whatever it
takes to achieve capital gain.
Coin mining isn’t always illegal. In fact,
in our recent SOTI Security Report, we
highlighted a growing trend for publishers
to offer web visitors content in exchange
for processing capacity for coin mining –
similar to the SETI initiative, where people
can donate access to underused CPU
capacity. And, of course, if someone is
using their own devices to mine for coins,
that can be perfectly legitimate. What
is far more problematic, is coin miners
illegally using malware to infect other
people’s devices, co-opting their processing
power and diverting it to manage bitcoin
transactions and mine coins. This means
that the infected device may not have
the available memory to complete the
activities that have been designated to it
at the speed that it otherwise might or, in
extreme circumstances, can slow down to
the point where it is unusable. It also means
that the victim is paying what is typically a
substantial electricity bill needed to power
the devices.
www.intelligentcio.com
A proactive approach is key when it comes
to blocking requests to malware and
ransomware drop sites. The way to do this is
by blocking malicious payloads for improved
zero-day protection by scanning requested
files and web content in real time to stop
threats before they reach and compromise
endpoint devices.
There are several ways a business can
protect its systems and data. At Akamai,
we have developed various forms of
threat mitigation and have built out an
entire threat research team to study the
behaviour of these hazards. Akamai is
continuously working to assess and track
threats like coin mining to add additional
protections to our Enterprise Threat
Protector offering, our cloud-based threat
protection solution. This solution ensures
all requested domains are checked against
a real-time domain risk scoring threat
intelligence. Users are proactively blocked
from accessing malicious domains and
services while requests to safe domains and
services are resolved. This solution is also
powered by real-time threat intelligence
based on Akamai’s unprecedented global
insights into Internet and Domain Name
System (DNS) traffic, which enables this
process to happen seamlessly.
focus on minimising security management
time and complexity. This is achievable
by reducing false positive security alerts,
decreasing alerts from other security
products and administering security policies
and updates from anywhere in seconds to
protect all locations.
Security control-point complications and
complexities and security gaps in legacy
solutions have to be managed. It is
important to introduce solutions that ensure
users and devices can securely connected
to the Internet wherever they happen to be,
without the intricacy associated with other
legacy security solutions. n
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Effectively, our platform is constantly learning
what the threats are and where they come
from so that we can intervene and block
attempts to push malware to devices.
When considering a solution to
cryptocurrency mining, companies should
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