The Monero community now has a workgroup whose aim is to respond to illegal mining of XMR through unethical means. The Monero Malware Response Workgroup is a group of volunteers that came together to combat unauthorized mining of the coin using the hard drives of machines oblivious to the owners. Unauthorized mining has become an issue in recent times as more hackers favor monero due to its reputation for privacy and security.
Concern About Illegal Use of The Cryptocurrency
In a blog post, the work group stated that despite the good uses of the cryptocurrency, illegal use of the coin has been a concern. The release highlighted the many positive aspects of Monero stating:
“Thousands of transactions per day are used for speculation, securing the network, and for everyday purchases. Several nonprofits including UNICEF Australia, BailBloc, and Change.org allow users to mine Monero by simply visiting a website. The proceeds support various philanthropic causes.”
Cryptojacking Using Monero
The group’s concerns are the miners using malicious scripts to mine XMR without authorization. This act is known to have adverse effects on machines such as slowing them down and reducing the service time of hard drives.
The group posited that restricting cryptocurrency mining to specialized equipment eliminates the threat but stated that it doesn’t stop malicious actors from exploiting others via ransomeware attacks. Moreso, such limitations come with security challenges that the Monero community is not comfortable with.
Justin Ehrenhofer, a leader in the group said that,
“Monero contributers build the best tool possible; they should not make it less secure even if it means the accessible system provides easier access to criminals too.”
Helping The People with Knowledge-Base Info
Nevertheless, the workgroup stated that the Monero community wouldn’t sit idly and permit the criminal minded to exploit the situation to the detriment of the society. This, according to the post is the reason the work group has created resources that are easy to follow. These will help people understand how mining works thereby helping them stop cryptojacking activities on their devices.
According to the release,
“The website is purposefully approachable to absolute newcomers so that anyone can understand, though it offers actionable information that novices and experts alike can follow. It’s our mission to resolve an unfortunate situation as well as possible.”
Industry Help
The group also announced that in future, it would be able to extend support services to users of the platform to help them overcome any challenges they face.
They acknowledged that malware attacks cannot be eliminated, nevertheless educating people would help them know how to prevent them. The intervention volunteers can be reached at Freenode, Riot/Matrix, Mattermost, and Slack.
