YouTube hacked, users watching videos on YouTube are at risk of being exploited to mine bitcoin

According to PC Mag, bitcoin mining software has infiltrated the world's most popular video platform YouTube and secretly exploited the computer power of YouTube viewers who clicked on ads.

According to the information, hackers decided to exploit Google's advertising network. These malicious ads started appearing last Wednesday, and then spread. According to security firm Trend Micro, many victims in Japan, France, Italy and Spain fell for the trap, unwittingly turning their computers into bitcoin mining machines.

Twitter users have also reported the issue, taking screenshots of their antivirus software detecting the cryptocurrency mining versions.

According to the analysis, hackers targeted YouTube because the platform is so popular. Trend Micro said the more browsers the cryptocurrency mining software accessed, the more digital currency it generated.

However, mining will cause the victim's computer to be exploited for resources, slowing down its performance. In this case, Trend Micro said that the computers of YouTube victims were exploited for about 80% of their processor power.

Google, which owns the YouTube video platform, has taken action. On Friday, Google announced that the ads were blocked in less than two hours. The software that the hackers installed has been removed from Google's platforms.

“Mining cryptocurrency through advertising is a relatively new form of exploiting computer power that violates our policies,” said a Google representative.

The advertising network on the YouTube video channel was hacked with software that took advantage of the victims' computer processing power to mine bitcoins.

Unfortunately, the practice of exploiting users’ computers to mine cryptocurrency may still be around. In recent months, hackers have attacked websites and even Chrome browser extensions to install web code that can mine the cryptocurrency Monero, which is currently worth $320 a coin.

Such exploits have become common: they rely on a service called Coinhive to mine the coins. Since September, Coinhive has offered a form of Javascript Monero miner that anyone can sign up to use and embed on their website, in exchange for Coinhive taking 30% of the proceeds.

The YouTube incident followed a similar scenario: that is, a version of Coinhive was also used for about 90% of the ads. The remaining ads ran in a separate web miner.

Recently, many antivirus software have started ranking Coinhive as one of the most dangerous malware threats on the web.