THE INTERNET OF THINGS: A HACKER’S PARADISE FOR BITCOIN MINING?

NEW YORK (InsideBitcoins) – In this age of everything being connected to the Internet, there could be some concern that hackers might take advantage of all this extra processing capability to mine for bitcoin. And as the Internet of Things (IoT) becomes more of a reality, this concern is only going to get greater.
‘Attacks don’t target the user but the computer itself.’
‘Cryptocurrencies are interesting as they open up new opportunities, like mining,’ Mikko Hypponen, chief researcher officer at F-Secure, said in reference to hackers at the Slush startup conference in Helsinki last month. ‘Attacks don’t target the user but the computer itself.’
The idea here is that a hacker would gain access to someone’s connected device and then program it to start mining digital currencies. And this isn’t just theory; it’s been done.

This post was published at Inside Bitcoins on Dec 1, 2014.