Cryptocurrency mined by hacking YouTube advertisements

YouTube advertisements were carrying cryptocurrency miners throughout this week. The software seems to have invaded the video platform and tried to drain off the computing power from any YouTube viewers who viewed the advertisements.

The hackers seem to have imbibed various ads with scripts, which will that will transfer from one browser to another and ultimately mine the digital currency Monero.

According to Trend Micro, a security firm, these advertisements started spreading to victims based in Japan, France, Taiwan, Italy and Spain as soon as it started this week. And this didn’t go unnoticed as people also took to social media to report that their anti virus software were detecting mining scripts. This kind of mining is actually not good for the computers health as it drains the power resources, which in turn affects the performance.

Google, which owns YouTube, reacted to this news and said that the advertisements were blocked in two hours. A spokesperson commented on the issue and said, "Mining cryptocurrency through ads is a relatively new form of abuse that violates our policies and one that we've been monitoring actively."