Kaspersky Lab products detect them as not-a-virus.Ĭybercriminals use rather conventional ways to distribute mining software – they are installed under the guise of other legitimate programs, such as pirated software distributed via torrents. Because these software programs are not malicious in themselves, most anti-malware programs do not react to them, or detect them as potentially unwanted programs (PUP). In November, we recorded several incidents where Zcash mining software was installed on users’ computers without permission. A few years ago, botnets were created for bitcoin mining, but the business all but died out after it became only marginally profitable. This has led to the revival of a particular type of cybercriminal activity – the creation of botnets for mining.
Ranking of cryptocurrency mining profitability, as reported by the CoinWarz website
Despite this dramatic drop from the initial values (which was anticipated), Zcash mining remains among the most profitable compared to other cryptocurrencies. At the time of writing, it had leveled out temporarily at 0.07 – 0.01 ZEC/BTC (around $70). In the following days, ZEC’s value steadily declined against Bitcoin. It should be pointed out, however, that there were only a few dozen coins in existence at that time, so the actual turnover was very low. Zcash got off to a flying start within the first few hours, 1 ZEC reached $30,000. Several major cryptocurrency exchanges were quick to offer support for the new currency. The cryptocurrency market has been looking for this level of anonymity for a while now, so ZEC has attracted considerable interest from investors, miners and cybercriminals alike. Its developers have described it rather figuratively: “If Bitcoin is like HTTP for money, Zcash is HTTPS.” They continue by noting that “unlike Bitcoin, Zcash transactions can be shielded to hide the sender, the recipient and value of all transactions.” On 28 October, the cryptocurrency world saw the emergence of a new player, the Zcash (ZEC) cryptocurrency.
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