Mining bitcoin with a browser could be a waste of time.
Last weekend, it emerged that the Browse Aloud web browser plugin had been hijacked, causing it to covertly mine cryptocurrency on around 5,000 computers. Among those affected were systems used by a number of British government bodies including the National Health Service and a student loans company. At the time, a spokesperson for the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre said: “NCSC technical experts are examining data involving incidents of malware being used to illegally mine cryptocurrency…Government websites will continue to operate securely. At this stage there is nothing to suggest that members of the public are at risk.” Naturally members of the public weren’t at risk – in any sense of the word. The only real side effects of having your browsing session cryptojacked are perhaps a slowdown in computing performance and the device heating up. The majority of web users wouldn’t even be aware that anything was amiss. While relatively benign, as cyber attacks go, mining malware is...