About this video
Cryptocurrency operates as a decentralized digital currency, meaning no single authority tracks transactions. Instead, a distributed network of participants collectively validates and records where funds move, a process known as crypto mining. Miners volunteer their computing resources to support this process and receive cryptocurrency rewards in return, making it a legitimate way to generate income through hardware participation.
The downside of mining is that it is computationally demanding. It consumes significant processing power, slows down affected systems, and drives up electricity costs for whoever is running it. These costs create an incentive for malicious actors to offload the burden onto others. Cryptojacking is the practice of secretly installing mining software on a victim's device without consent, commandeering that device's CPU or GPU to mine cryptocurrency on the attacker's behalf.
The victim typically has no awareness that their machine has been compromised, but they experience the consequences directly through degraded system performance, increased energy consumption, and hardware wear. The attacker, meanwhile, collects the mining rewards without incurring any of the associated costs. Cryptojacking can be delivered through malware, malicious scripts embedded in websites, or compromised software, making it a persistent threat across both personal and enterprise environments.
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