Cryptojacking Is Extremely Popular in Sweden, Researchers Claim

People who have kept close tabs on the cryptocurrency industry may have come across the term “cryptojacking” before. This particular trend revolves around hackers controlling other people’s computers or smart devices to mine cryptocurrency. A new report shows cryptojacking has gained a lot of traction in Sweden as of late.

Sweden is Home to Many Cryptojackers

It is unfortunate to see how popular illicit trends associated with cryptocurrencies are becoming. The concept of cryptojacking is nothing new by any means, but it is evident things are slowly getting out of hand. More specifically, criminals continue to show interest in breaching other people’s computers to mine cryptocurrency, typically altcoins. For most users, this type of activity goes by unnoticed, which only creates more problems in the long run.

Cryptojacking is usually done in such a way that the victim won’t notice anything malicious is going on, although it remains to be seen how successful such efforts really are in the end. It takes a lot of computing power to mine cryptocurrencies, even if it’s altcoins we’re talking about rather than Bitcoin. Mining Bitcoin with a regular computer is virtually impossible these days.

In Sweden, there has been a strong uptick in cryptojacking activity. That is not a positive sign by any means, especially considering that it’s nearly the only country to show an increase on this scale. While we see security threats rise in number every year, it seems cryptojacking may eventually become more worrisome than ransomware, assuming this trend keeps up.

To put this into numbers, Sweden saw a 10,000% increase in cryptojacking during Q4 of 2017. While that may not say much without knowing the full story, it is a growth rate twice as high as the rest of the world. This seems to indicate there is a lot of criminal activity related to cryptocurrency going on in Sweden right now, although it remains unclear what makes this country so popular.

A lot of people are swayed by the potential to make a lot of money hijacking other people’s computers. How they do so exactly remains to be determined, but it seems the use of malware to infiltrate target computers is the most logical method. Once a hacker gains backdoor access, they can usually install any type of software without the device owner being any wiser. It creates a very troublesome scenario that needs to be dealt with accordingly.

The big question is whether or not the cryptojacking trend will continue to gain popularity in Sweden. As of right now, there is no reason to think that won’t be the case, but only time will tell what the future holds in this regard. There is also an uptick in the number of recent banking Trojan attacks in Sweden, which is another troublesome development, for obvious reasons.