Cryptocurrency miners are slipping ads on unsuspecting website.
Anomalies within advertising code across both desktop and mobile environments after further inspection showed that these seemingly legitimate ads are actually in the business of mining for Monero.
These trojanised ads are Java-enabled attempt to con site visitors into clicking on a pop-up that would initiate the mining process.
Tomer Horev, chief strategy officer at Spotad and the lead on Sarah’s findings, told CoinDeskthat it was just a matter of time before criminals embraced web-based mining.
"I think people identify that as the next gold rush and they will try to do everything that they can, in order to produce this kind of money,” he said. "Monero has script that can perform well on CPUs that actually reside in any desktop, laptop, and mobile device…This type of cryptocurrency has value harvesting through low-end devices.”
To avoid being part of the problem, brands and agencies, as well as ad networks and website owners, should examine their code for malicious injection on a regular basis.