- Protecting yourself from cryptojacking is really simple, if you know how
- With three tips, you’ll be able to protect yourself from a wide number of cryptojacking attacks
- Eventually, if enough people are aware, cryptojacking attacks will be unsuccessful and this vector of attack will die out
Cryptojacking is a rather scary phenomenon for a lot of people, as unless you’re really attentive to your device’s consumption, you might not even know you’re infected. This frustrating form of crypto attack will drain your resources and cause your hardware to burnout faster than it should do.
So, to protect you, your network and your devices, we’re going to run through everything you can do in 2020 to keep cryptojackers at bay. Even though Microsoft claims that cryptojacking is down more than 40%, there are still a LOT of cryptojackers out there and they’re always looking for an easy run!
Keep Everything Up to Date
One of the most common places that hackers target is routers. Once the hacker has control of the router, they can push cryptojacking scripts to all of your devices, effectively turning your whole network into their own private crypto mining farm. So, to prevent your fridge, laptop, TV, PlayStation and gaming PC from mining crypto for hackers, we suggest you keep your router up to date.
This is one of the most common forms of attacks because people don’t update their router firmware and this firmware often isn’t set to auto update. It’s not scary to do, and it takes less than a few minutes to do this. Most routers are located at 192.168.0.1, but if that doesn’t work, check the base or rear of your router for the address. You’ll also find the login details there, but the combo is usually admin and password.
Once you’re in, simply head to administration or a tab that suggests its where the router’s information is. In there, you should find a button that says update firmware. Simply log in here once a week and check to see if there’s an update. It takes two minutes to do and can save your network from hackers.
Use Ad Blockers When Possible
Web developers hate ad blockers with a passion as they block any scripts that looks suspicious, meaning that a lot of websites don’t load properly because ad blockers refuse to run the script. But, running an ad blocker on your device of choice will prevent any cryptojacking scripts that have been injected into websites from running on your machine.
This means you’ll be safer from cryptojacking when you’re browsing the web, so you can roam around knowing that you’re safe from cryptojackers. It’s worth noting that some websites won’t allow you to view content while using an ad blocker as they use ads as a form of revenue. If you know a site to be reputable, you can always set your ad blocker to turn off when you’re using that particular site.
Don’t Download Anything Unless It’s Confirmed Legit
Finally, we come to what we hope is the most common-sense item on our list. NEVER ever download anything from the internet or from an email unless you’re 100% sure that it’s the real deal. Cryptojackers can spoof email addresses to make it look like a real pay slip from HR or free version of Skyrim for your smart fridge. But, once that app is installed or the file has been downloaded, you’ll be infected.
So, do yourself a favor. If you’re going to download something from the internet or from an attachment in an email, make sure you can verify that it’s the original file from the person claiming to have created it. This will save you so much trouble down the line as it’s not just cryptojackers using this type of attack to get into your devices.
Stay Safe
If you follow these three steps, you should be relatively safe from cryptojacking. Knowledge is power and if you arm yourself to the teeth, you’ll be able to protect yourself and your devices from evil cryptojackers. The more people that are fully protected against these people, the less likely they are to continue with this vector of attack.
