Coinhive Announces Plans to Shut Down on March 8
Cryptocurrency mining service, Coinhive has announced that it will be shutting down operations on March 8. The reason cited for the decision is the unprofitable market conditions.
The crypto mining service portrayed that the project has become financially unfeasible, especially after the last Monero (XMR) hard fork which caused a 15% fall in hash rate. Miners will, however, be able to access their dashboard until 30th April.
The crypto space has witnessed various platforms shutting down or laying off staff, during the last few months, because of the bear market and several other factors. The year 2018 has been the most terrible one for cryptocurrencies in a long time, with several new and established tokens losing as much as 50% of their value.
Earlier this month, cryptocurrency exchange Huobi Australia announced that it would be shutting its operations in Australia just eight months after its launch in Melbourne. Chief Executive Officer of Huobi Jun Du stated that the company is restructuring its plan to survive in the crypto market which is becoming more challenging day by day.
Another mining service Bitmain Technology laid off almost 50% of its staff in a bid to cut costs. Similar cost-cutting measures were taken up by other crypto companies like Shapeshift, Steemit, and Coinfloor, which also laid of a large chunk of their employees. These adverse developments in the market pose a question of whether the bear market is the sole reason for cryptocurrency companies to make cutbacks.
Moreover, the price of Monero token (XMR) fell by more than 85%. It is one of the reasons why they are discontinuing service. The company stated in the statement that the slump in price and the announced hard fork and algorithm update of the Monero network due on March 9 compelled the company to discontinue Coinhive.
Coinhive the Hackers’ Heaven
Coinhive is a cryptocurrency mining service which was sold as an alternative to advertisements on websites. The integrated services use the computing power of visitors after the code is installed, to allow a small revenue to the sites you visit. However, the platform was quite unsafe, recording several instances of hacking.
KerbsOnSecurity, the famous cyber-security analysis firm said that Coihive has always been a malicious code, which is quite favourable for hackers. The firm said in a statement that Coinhive is a top malicious threat to web users, because of the tendency for Coinhive’s computer code to be used on hacked websites, to steal the processing powers of the visitors’ devices.
Earlier last month, Symantec discovered potentially unwanted applications (PUA) of the Microsoft store. These PUAs were found to be mining cryptocurrency, using the processors of the victim’s device who were unaware of the situation. Symantec analysis claimed that these PUAs displayed traces of Coinhive based malware code, which facilitates XMR mining.
Cyber attacks of cryptocurrencies and exchanges have been a matter of concern for an elongated period. Digital currencies worth millions of dollars had been lost due to security infringement in 2018 alone.
