What is a Cryptominer?
Cryptominers can be used both legitimately and illegitimately to mine cryptocurrencies. Cryptominers, when used illegitimately on your computer without your awareness, seek to hijack idle processing power to mine cryptocurrency and make the cybercriminal rich.
To create cryptocurrency, users must loan their computer's processing power to "mine" the coins by solving complex math equations. Hackers seek to maximize potential profits by leveraging the computing power of as many devices as they can, even ones they shouldn't have access to.
Cryptocurrency is a type of digital money. Its value is derived from the fact that the only way to acquire cryptocurrency is to have a computer work on solving very complicated mathematical equations. Once these equations are solved to a certain point, an amount of cryptocurrency is then "owned" by whomever did the solving. This process is called "mining" for cryptocurrency.
Cryptocurrency mining can put a heavy computational load on a computer. This could cause its operation to slow down while the mining is happening. In addition, if a computer mining cryptocurrency continuously, it can significantly increase your electricity bill through your computer's increased electricity consumption.
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