4.32% of all Monero has been mined through crypto mining malware

4.23% of all Monero (XRM) has been mined by crypto mining malware since 2007, according to a report published by two researchers from Universidad Carlos III de Madrid and King’s College London.

The report covers crypto mining malware from 2007, analyzing over 4.4 million malware samples over the 12 year period. The research detected over one million malicious miners. 

The researchers admitted that roughly 2,218 malware campaigns took place, accumulating roughly 720,000 XMR, equivalent to $57 million. One such campaign which is still ongoing has managed to net 163,000 XMR to date. 

The report also states that favoured tactics "is to use legitimate infrastructure such as Dropbox or GitHub to host the droppers, and stock mining tools such as claymore and xmrig to do the actual mining.”

Also read: Missing millionaire: Ransom note found demanding €9 million in Monero

The increase in malware mining increased a staggering 4,000% over the past year, with XMR taking top spot. Key factors for Monero being the most popular malware mining coin can be attributed to the privacy features the project offers. Making XMR a far easier coin to move anonymously between wallets. BTC came in second, with another privacy based coin, ZEC coming in third.