Taking advantage of the school to mine, modern college students love to be miners

Today’s university campuses do more than just produce new graduates; they also generate large amounts of cryptocurrencies.

Security researchers at Cisco have been studying the status of cryptocurrency mining in different industries and found that college campuses are the second largest choice for virtual currency mining, accounting for 22%.

This is likely because some students place mining machines in their dormitories. Cisco researcher Austin McBride said:

Let the mining machine run in the dormitory for four years, and you can get a lot of money when you leave the college campus.

The electricity used by students for mining is provided by the school and is completely free. McBride said:

This way you can run a mining machine in your dorm or school library without having to worry about the mining income not covering the costs.

McBride pointed out that cryptocurrency mining on campus is very decentralized, which means that many students are mining in their dormitories. But not all cryptocurrency mining is done in student dormitories. Hackers can also use malware to attack some computers with weak security measures and secretly use these hardware facilities to mine.

Currently, many coins have a high mining difficulty - that is, the electricity cost is higher than the profit generated by mining. If you don't have to pay the cost, then you can make money while you are at university.

It's not surprising that the energy and utilities sectors are the main players in cryptocurrency mining, according to Cisco. McBride speculates that this may be because these companies are still using older computers that are vulnerable to mining malware.

Energy and utility systems are often purpose-built and don’t get the same frequent software and hardware upgrades as regular Macs or PCs, so once vulnerabilities are discovered, they’re less efficient to patch and easier targets for attackers.

Being hacked by mining malware may seem like a harmless nuisance, but prolonged mining can affect companies and organizations by increasing electricity costs and putting a strain on hardware. In addition, being hacked by mining malware also means opening the door to other malicious code. Therefore, affected companies should be wary of this unauthorized mining activity.

According to Cisco's investigation, although the cryptocurrency market has been falling since 2017, virtual currency mining activities have remained very active. For example, since March last year, network traffic related to mining activities has increased by at least 19 times.