This is the era where you see Wifi’s everywhere; be it your local coffee shop or pizza shops; you can connect to their free Wifi and enjoy using free internet. But did you acknowledge that every time you connect to a public Wi-Fi, you could be imperiling yourself to a cryptocurrency mining hack? To put it in simple words, some people may use your unsecured connection to a public Wi-Fi; to misuse your computing devices and mine cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Monero, and many others. Let’s learn how VPN protects you from Bitcoin Mining on public WiFi. (also see,The Ultimate Privacy Guide)
How VPN Protects You from Bitcoin Mining on Public WiFi
Here’s How It Happened
Back in the middle of December; last year; some Buenos Aires Starbucks consumers saw that when connecting to the Wi-Fi convenience; they had a ten-second pause during which their machines were being employed to mine Bitcoins. One such client tweeted a question; asking the same, and much soon the Starbucks IT staff understood; that their Wi-Fi connection had been tripled by malware.
While this came as a shock to numerous people; to others, it was just another level up in the growth of mining hacks used by people with evil intent to get rich quickly.
Mining Cryptocurrencies
If you don’t understand what cryptocurrencies are; here is a quick summary. Cryptocurrencies are primarily money in digital form. They started originally as low stake purchases used only by the extremely tech-savvy. But in the past couple of years; their interest rate has grown immensely; and this has led to a massive surge in the public interest in them.
One of the best (or most concerning) parts about cryptocurrencies is that you can ‘mine’ most of them. This implies that you can create cryptocurrencies by using any network to solve complex mathematical equations and in return; the solver is compensated with a bunch of cryptocurrencies whose denominations can be chosen by them.
How They Do It?
As soon as you connect to a public Wi-Fi, you conceivably make yourself open to a series of attacks, and mining hacks are one of them. In it, the hackers install malware on the Wi-Fi router which hits into the computing devices of anyone connected to the Wi-Fi. This allows the software to make use of the local computing resources of all users connected to the router and execute mining operations.
Usually, if a miner is using your computer, laptop or any other device, you will most plausibly see a delay in connecting to the router. This is a sure indication that something is going wrong. If you face this problem; you should leave the connection quickly and inform the provider.
On the other hand, a software has been developed to optimize coffee Wi-Fi hacks and do so more discreetly. This software, so poetically called CoffeeMiner, has been designed to keep working in the background of your computer for the entire duration of your active connection to the infected Wi-Fi.
How VPN Protects You from Bitcoin Mining on Public WiFi
The fundamental basis of a VPN is that it offers a secure and encrypted tunnel between any router and your device. Anybody attempting to digitally break into your device or even get to read the transmission code will not be able to interpret it.(also check, 5 Best Bitcoin VPN 2018)
Using VPN ensures that any site or internet source like a Wi-Fi router does not instill an unauthorized code into your computer (by which cryptocurrency mining is done). Even if a Wi-Fi is infected, you will still not get the code forced into your device as all connections and communications are encrypted.
Conclusion – How VPN Protects You from Bitcoin Mining on Public WiFi
In a nutshell, it depends on how much you want to be secure over the web. You can take your online security in your hand and protect it with the maximum level of security. Thus, be sure the next time you log into a public Wi-Fi; you secure your system from any attacks with a good VPN service!
