Experts from Kaspersky GReAT (Kaspersky Lab’s Global Threat Research and Analysis Center) told RB.RU that a hidden and silent XMRig miner was disguised as the YouTube app for Windows.
Author:
https://rb.ru/author/ntihonov/
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The application appeared on GitHub a few months ago. The author claims that the program implements all the functions of the well-known video hosting service. And this is true, experts say, but at the same time the user received a hidden miner on his device. The code published on GitHub did not contain unwanted software: it was added to the application for download. Over six months, specialists identified several thousand unique copies and attacked Russian users.
“The consequences of infecting a device with a hidden miner can be much more serious than commonly believed. The device will start to slow down, overheat, and in rare cases, it may even fail. In addition, the miner consumes a lot of electricity, and the affected user has to pay for it,” said Dmitry Galov, Director of Kaspersky GReAT in Russia.
Running such a program on a PC or smartphone indicates that the device is not sufficiently protected. In addition to mining, the application performs other dangerous actions.
When downloading, the user may not notice that there are two programs installed on his device at once, and since the total size of YouTube for PC is 145 MB, the 8 MB miner installer will be invisible. The miner has another distinctive property. If it is incorrectly removed from the PC, it can reappear on the device. Therefore, it is recommended to perform “cleaning” using a protective solution or with the help of specialists.
To protect yourself from hidden mining and other cyber threats, there are several tips you can follow to protect your PCs:
- download applications only from official sources (app stores or websites of development companies);
- Do not blindly trust executable files distributed on GitHub;
- Use a reliable protective solution that has been proven effective.
Since the beginning of August, Russian residents have started buying routers with pre-installed VPNs in droves after YouTube slowed down. They are already selling for 40% more, and the cost of the device, according to Izvestia, is 2.5-3 times higher than that of a standard device.
Author:
Nikolai Tikhonov
Source: RB
I am a professional journalist and content creator with extensive experience writing for news websites. I currently work as an author at Gadget Onus, where I specialize in covering hot news topics. My written pieces have been published on some of the biggest media outlets around the world, including The Guardian and BBC News.
