By Avia Yaacov, Product Manager, Pentera Cryptojacking. It’s not as loud as ransomware or headline-grabbing data breaches, but it’s quietly draining resources and racking up costs. Instead of locking you out of your systems, cryptojacking silently hijacks your computing power—whether it’s on your servers or in the cloud—and mines cryptocurrency without you even knowing. It’s costing companies more than they realize, and it’s time to address this threat before it causes more harm. In 2023, cryptojacking attacks surged by 659%, according to SonicWall. For every $1 worth of cryptocurrency mined, companies are left paying around $53 in cloud costs. And since cryptojacking doesn’t immediately disrupt systems like ransomware, it often goes unnoticed—leaving organizations to discover the damage long after it’s been done. With more businesses shifting to cloud environments and containerized infrastructures, cryptojackers are finding new ways to exploit these systems. The question is: how do you defend your organization against an attack that’s designed to stay hidden? Cryptojacking involves the unauthorized use of your computing resources—whether it’s your CPU, GPU, or cloud infrastructure—to mine cryptocurrency like Bitcoin or Monero. The goal isn’t to steal your data, but your processing power. And attackers have developed several methods to get cryptomining code into your systems. Here’s how they typically infiltrate:
While cryptojacking might seem like a minor inconvenience com...