As the cryptocurrency boom continues to sweep the world, hacking activities aimed at mining cryptocurrencies have emerged as the top internet security threat of the year, shows a new report released by global cybersecurity firm Symantec.

According to Symantec’s “2018 Internet Security Threat Report” released this week, cryptojacking — the act of hacking a computer system to mine cryptocurrencies without the owner of the machine knowing — was the biggest trending attack of 2017.

Coin mining is the process of verifying transactions made on a blockchain-based cryptocurrency network by solving complex mathematical problems using high-power computing systems, and earning coins as compensation.

As cryptocurrency values have seen an explosive hike over the past year, hackers who had previously relied on ransomware for revenues are now looking to malicious coin mining as a lucrative source of profit.

And as a result of this “coin mining gold rush,” the world saw an 8,500 percent increase in detections of coin miners on endpoint computers in 2017, from 20,000 cases in January to 1.7 million in December, Symantec said.

“With a low barrier of entry — only requiring a couple lines of code to operate — cyber criminals are using coin miners to steal computer processing power and cloud CPU usage from consumers and enterprises to mine cryptocurrency,” the report reads.

The impacts of coin mining are largely performance-related: it can slow down devices, overheat batteries and sometimes render devices unusable. And these consequences can be particularly detrimental for corporate organizations, whose networks could face a sudden shutdown from the coin mining activities.

Companies whose networks are hijacked for coin mining may be billed for cloud CPU usage caused by malicious coin miners, causing financial damage, Symantec said.

Cryptojacking attacks targeting browsers on personal computers have been on the rise. There were twice as many malicious coin mining software detected on individually-owned computers than on enterprise-owned machines, according to the report.

The US-based cybersecurity firm also warned that connected devices based on the Internet of Things technology will continue to face cybersecurity threats.

Symantec said that it has already found a 600 percent increase in overall IoT attacks from 6,000 cases to 50,000 cases in 2017, suggesting that cyber criminals could exploit the connected nature of these devices to mine crypto coins in a large scale.

“We’re seeing an explosive rise in cryptojacking by hackers targeting high returns from cryptocurrency mining,” said Symantec Korea Chief Technology Officer Yoon Kwang-taek in presenting the report in Seoul on Tuesday.

“With cybercriminals becoming more organized and prone to engage in more cost-effective modes of hacking, there is a need for new, comprehensive security solutions.”

Symantec further highlighted the growing threats of hacking in the mobile space. The number of new mobile malware variants increased by 54 percent in 2017 from the previous year. The cybersecurity software provider also blocked an average of 24,000 malicious mobile apps daily last year.

By Sohn Ji-young (jys@heraldcorp.com)