Cryptojacking

Cryptojacking hijacks a victim's CPU, GPU, or cloud account to mine cryptocurrency for the attacker. It can be delivered through binaries dropped after a compromise, malicious browser-side miners injected into websites, or by abusing stolen cloud credentials to spin up large mining workloads. Symptoms include sustained high CPU usage, overheating, sluggish performance, and unexpected cloud bills. Because no data is stolen and ransom isn't demanded, cryptojacking often goes unnoticed for long periods. Defences include endpoint anti-malware, browser blockers, monitoring of process and resource baselines, restricting outbound traffic to known mining pools, and auditing cloud IAM permissions.