Millions of smartphones around the world have been used for secret mining cryptocurrencies,  said the experts at cybersecurity company Malwarebytes. They also noted that there is a hacker company that used Android gadgets for these purposes.

So-called “drive-by cryptomining” malware redirected Android users to special websites running cryptocurrency mining code that hacked their phone processors for mining Monero.

The exact number of victims is not known, but it is large. Malwarebytes detected five Internet domains using the same captcha code and the Coinhive site keys used for the campaign. At least two sites had more than 30 million visits per month. The average time of website visiting was 4 minutes. Even that short time was enough for mining of a few thousand dollars of  Monero on a monthly basis.

“Cryptojacking” can cause device slowdown and the processor can’t running at full speed. In some cases, this can lead even to chip overheating and device destruction.

Malwarebytes assumes that cause of malicious software redirection is hidden in Android applications (legitimate software), which contains malware-riddled advertisements. This concerns especially so-called "free" applications,

Malwarebytes recommends using web filters and security software to prevent such cryptoattacks.

Source:

https://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/3026567/millions-of-android-phones-were-redirected-to-cryptocurrency-mining-site