The research, published by Sergio Pastrana from Universidad Carlos III de Madrid and Guillermo Suarez-Tangil from King’s College London, focuses on cybercriminals who install malware on computers without the knowledge of their owners, which can “mine” the virtual currency illicitly. Cryptocurrencies use encryption techniques to regulate the generation of units of currency and verify the transfer of funds, operating independently of a central bank, with Bitcoin probably the most famous example. Cybercurrency mining is performed by high-powered computers which solve complex computational math problems.
The luck and work required by a computer to solve one of these problems is the equivalent of a miner striking gold in the ground, but the odds reduce the more computers a cryptocurrency miners have at their disposal.
Cybercriminals have homed in on Monero, also known as XMR, because it is privacy-focused, with no way of tracing transactions.
As a result, the report estimates 4.32 percent of Monero has been lost to illegal crypto mining by “underground economies”.
The report suggests miners used simple mechanisms to avoid detection by computer users, and employed minimal and cost-effective infrastructure to mine Monero.
It estimated there were at least 2,218 active campaigns which have accumulated about 720K XMR (equal to £44million, or $57million).
It added: “Interestingly just a single campaign (C#623) has mined more than 163K XMR (18M USD), which accounts for about 23% of the total estimated.
“This campaign is still active at the time of writing.
“Cryptocurrency mining is a rather easy monetisation technique using hardware resources.
“However, it requires an investment in equipment and also entails a cost in terms of energy.
“In illicit cryptomining, criminals make use of their victims’ computing resources to mine crypto-currencies on their behalf.
“This threat exists since the creation of Bitcoin in 2009, but it has increased since 2014 due to the inception of Cryptonote and other PoW algorithms resistant to ASIC-based mining.”
Cryptomining malware can be easily purchased for a few dollars online, the research added.
It noted advertisments circulated in underground communities for such software were commonplace, adding: “This indicates that cybercrime commoditisation is key to the wealth of illicit cryptomining.
“The increasing support offered to criminals explains the sharp growth on the amount of malware monetizing their victims.”
Cryptomining malware attacks increased by more than 4000 percent in 2018, with Monero at the centre of them.
Express.co.uk has contacted US-based Ditto PR, which lists Monero among its clients, to ask for a comment about the findings of the report.
On Ditto’s website, it describes Monero as a “safe, secure, untraceable cryptocurrency that is decentralised and uniquely maintained by a community of core developers”.