Hackers Breaking Into Corporate Servers: "We Don't Give A Damn About Your Data, We Just Want To Mine Some Bitcoin"
If you are a big company and leave your servers unsupervised, hackers will eventually break in, because, well... that's what hackers do.
But some patterns seem to have changed in this area, at least when it comes to what hackers are after. Until recently, they were interested in data. But a new trend emerges, when hackers are hijacking corporate computers not for sensitive data, but for computing power, used, obviously, to mine Bitcoin.
According to a story published by Business Insider, two big companies, Aviva and Gemalto had a few Amazon instances hacked, and these computers were used by hackers for mining (still not clear how big the computers and how much Bitcoin they mined).
This comes less than a week after we learned about 2 officials from the Crimeean government which were fired because they were using government owned equipment to mine Bitcoin.
Apparently, data is not valuable anymore, or at least not as valuable as crypto-currencies.
And hackers usually have a hunch about what is worth breaking in for, you know...
I'm a serial entrepreneur, blogger and ultrarunner. You can find me mainly on my blog at Dragos Roua where I write about productivity, business, relationships and running. Here on Steemit you may stay updated by following me @dragosroua.
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Yes that's true... in fact I did that to our mainserver with gigantic idle computing power. I use it to mine monero... maybe you think its unethical but I secure a permission first to my superior and he had a go signal to test
Way to go :)
A question here is whether they can make more from not being destructive in a way its a lesser evil or do we allow them to be a parasite on our systems using a % of our processing power just so to be protected from other hacking groups even?
Well, that's way too philosophical for me, but I guess some stuff will never change.
Greed it's part of the human nature. An unfortunate fact, but a fact. When human nature will evolve in such a way that greed won't be there anymore, then we'll see...
I don't think I will be holding my breath on human nature evolving in general, but just hope that fair-minded people prevail :)
that's what I call a healthy attitude!
Cheers :)
I like this line of thought! Speaking of parasites, you could almost analogise a computing node to the human gut microbiota, and opportunist micro-organisms.
I see where you're going with this. One has to live the other, even if we don't like it. We have to accept it and we learn to manage it.
You've got some interesting post too, duly Followed :)
Given how inefficient bitcoin mining is without dedicated equipment (ASIC), those guys aren't very bright... better mine ASIC-resistant coins like eth or monero
This is a new perspective, thanks for pointing it out.
@dragosroua,
Ha ha ha that's funny :D Hackers started hack servers for mining :D Yeah they understood the value of mining rather than hacking for valuable data :D Great information friend!
Cheers~
That is pretty interesting. Computing power at the expense of data. How crypto currency has changed the world.
Interesting article.
Food for thought.
Yeah, I smiled when I read the headline. They left all those files and chose the most profitable and hassle free way. It really makes you think
Hackers are usually not a good thing and yes this still is probably illegal but at least they are or at the time were not after any personal data. Now again it is still bad but come on, this is super smart, get into a system so that you don't pay for the electricity but you still get a load of computing power. I am not sure how many of these types of hackers there are out there but it makes me feel a little bit safer about them mining bitcoin instead of going after my personal data. What do yall think?!
Yes, that's my view too. It's refreshing to know there's something more valuable to hackers than my own personal data (including identity, assets, etc).
I literally laughed out loud when I read the title :)
Hackers go to hell, lol.