Android devices once again targeted by latent miners

A new malicious website has been spotted by cyber security experts. Its main page contains a message about the suspicious activity of the visitor’s phone. In order to verify that the user is indeed in control of the device, the website offers to enter a captcha or a special code. After doing so, the user initiates the mining of cryptocurrency Monero. Because the processors of the mobile devices are weaker than those of computers, mining can do more harm to smartphones and tablets.

Researchers explain that this website has been created with a simple intention to attract traffic and could have easily been filled with advertisement as a means of revenue. However, the unknown creators decided that it would be safer for them to use remote mining.

The messages regarding the threats of mining viruses are becoming increasingly similar to each other. Android devices infected by latent miners - recently observers have already seen a story on this, but in that occasion, the virus even managed to inject into Android TV devices through debug port 5555. That virus also formed a botnet of “zombified” devices, which does not happen here.