Bitcoin mining pool learning stationery
Be sure to also block the installation of Google Chrome extensions; there are a number of them designed for Bitcoin mining. During the course of my career, I have reviewed many lists of system administrators with individuals who have no business having access. Accounts of former staff members left dormant are also a very good way for an ill intended individual to hide their deeds. Access to the BIOS the small piece of software that controls the computer functions also needs to be restricted.
Without such protection, a user may be able to circumvent operating system controls and boot to, for example, a USB drive with mining software. Finally, segregation of duties can be a very effective way to prevent illicit software being installed. Segregation of duties is the concept where actions from multiple individuals are required to complete a task.
It prevents a single individual from doing all the tasks and as such would require collusion to achieve the goal of installing mining software. In smaller organisations, segregation of duties is often not possible.
However, in large companies with many systems, such mechanisms can be achieved. Often overlooked, physical security is just as important as logical security.
The server room is the key here. Similar to administration access, access to the server room needs to be severely restricted to personnel who need access to do their jobs. Access logs should be reviewed and checked for suspicious activity.
You should also always have anti-virus installed. In a corporate environment, such an event would normally trigger an alert to system administrators. Of course, this comes back to my first point of administrative access and segregation of duties. If a user is able to disable the anti-virus software, this key control is easily bypassed. One prevention method on which I will pass briefly is network traffic monitoring and blocking.
I say briefly since from the material I have read, this is likely inefficient to prevent mining on a network. On the network monitoring front, administrators can inspect network traffic to look for data mining, mainly data transfers to and from the mining pool with which the installed mining software will communicate.
Should network administrators attempt to identify mining traffic, I would suggest inspecting traffic coming from specific hosts to identify any traffic which is not in-line with normal business activities. That way, one could isolate the suspect data. The actual volume of data transmitted is likely to be quite low due to the nature of the data being transmitted. As I mentioned above, mining software will generally communicate with a mining pool. Blocking specific network ports is likely not going to be very effective.
Some of my clients perform quarterly firewall rule reviews! If your organisation has software or a device that can perform content filtering, it would be a good idea to review its settings to make sure that it is blocking access to locations where mining software can be downloaded. While you are at it, it may be a good time to review your corporate policy for removable media such as USB drives; if the person is unable to download the software directly from the corporate Internet connection, they may try to bring it on a flash drive or the likes.
Unless there are compelling business reasons, all external media should be blocked on office computers. Finally, human resources can play a role in prevention. The first would be at the time of hiring. It still amazes me that many organisations do not perform proper background checks nor properly check references during the hiring process.
Of course, local regulations will vary, but generally a police clearance or the likes is authorized in many locales. Secondly, within the IT Policy, a clause which covers the installation of unauthorized software should be included if it is not already present. Organisations who wish to offer even more clarity could specifically word out that activities related to crypto currencies including installing mining software are not permitted on company resources. Of course, before including any of these, your legal counsel should weigh in.
Unfortunately, the prevention part is easier than detection! The first and most important is to monitor your systems and network. Including systems you may have in the cloud Without some form of monitoring, detection will be much more difficult.
Bitcoin mining software, as mentioned in the first section of this article, is the solving of complex mathematical equations. In fact, mining for Bitcoin will normally take up a LOT of their processing power.
If a monitoring system is available, alert thresholds should be set to detect continuous high usage, a very constant level of usage or other events that are not normal based on the information systems deployed on the host. Not to be neglected is after-hours use of the systems. Since mining for bitcoin is system intensive, it will be very tempting to have the mining software kick-in after-hours, when staff are not using the systems and system slowdowns are likely to not be noticed.
Unusual high usage in the middle of the night would be something to investigate. One variable that could tip off management that mining activities are going on is the utility bill. Mining will make computer systems work very hard and will also generate lots of heat. In the early days of bitcoin, it was possible to mine with your computer CPU or high speed video processor card.
Today that's no longer possible. Custom Bitcoin Exercisee chips offer performance up to x the capability of older systems have come to dominate the Bitcoin mining industry. Bitcoin mining with anything less will consume more in electricity than you are likely to earn. It's essential to mine bitcoins with the best bitcoin mining hardware wxercise specifically for that purpose. Several companies such as Avalon offer excellent systems built specifically for bitcoin mining.
Here greatly simplifies the process but increases risk because you do not control the actual physical hardware. Being listed in this section is NOT an endorsement of these services. There have been a tremendous amount of Bitcoin cloud mining scams. Genesis Mining is the largest Bitcoin and scrypt cloud mining att. Genesis Mining offers three Bitcoin cloud mining plans that are reasonably priced.
Zcash mining contracts are also available. Hashing24 has been involved with Bitcoin mining since They have facilities nining Iceland and Georgia. Users purchase Cloudpacks which can then be used to build an index from pre-picked sets of cloud mining farms, lotteries, casinos, real-world markets and much more. Offers both pool and merged mining and cloud mining services for Bitcoin. HashNest currently has over Antminer S7s for rent.
You can view the most up-to-date pricing and availability on Hashnest's website.