The rise of cryptojacking—which co-opts your PC or mobile device to illicitly mine cryptocurrency when you visit an infected site—has fueled mining's increasing appeal. But as attackers have expanded their tools to slyly outsource the number of devices, processing power, and electricity powering their mining operations, they've moved beyond the browser in potentially dangerous ways.
On Thursday, the critical infrastructure security firm Radiflow announced that it had discovered cryptocurrency mining malware in the operational technology network (which does monitoring and control) of a water utility in Europe—the first known instance of mining malware being used against an industrial control system.