02.01.2018

Cryptocurrency trojans

A couple of readers in Belgium and the UK contacted us yesterday to say that their Google Chrome browsers had flagged up the risk of encountering a bitcoin/Cryptocurrency Trojan when checking out Vertikal.net yesterday.

We immediately carried out a thorough and in depth check of the site for any potential risks and ran a further check on all the security systems. The checks confirmed that the site was both 100 percent clean and that the security systems were all up bang up to date with the very latest defences. Some brief research into the subject indicates that these types of Trojan are part of bitcoin mining programmes, which attempt to penetrate high traffic websites such as Vertikal.net.

As part of our heightened security settings implemented a couple of years ago, any such attempts to breach our defences are prevented and then regularly cleared from the cache as part of the systems routines.

While cryptocurrency mining programmes are perfectly legal, we do not, and will not host cryptocurrency mining programmes, just as we do not sell space or sign up to Google or other search engine advertisements.

In order to limit the potential for such false warnings we have implemented a more regular shedding/cache clearing process.

In summary, while such attempts are always a worry when they first rear their head, they do at least keep us on our toes and provide a chance to double check our security measures which is probably no bad thing.