Ads on YouTube have recently been targeted as a source to mine cryptocurrency. The mining software invaded the video platform in an attempt to secretly use the computing power from any YouTube viewers who encountered the ads. Google’s ad network have been abused by hackers seeding the advertisements with web scripts that’ll run over your browser in order to mine the digital currency Monero.
According to reports from Security firm, Trend Micro, Majority of the ads arrived on Wednesday which then ended up spreading to victims based in Japan, France, Taiwan, Italy and Spain.
Users who experienced the issue have also taken to twitter by posting screenshots of their antivirus software detecting the mining scripts.
The YouTube platorm was probably targeted because of its popularity, as more browsers the mining software can leverage, the more cryptocurrency it generates.
Google, which owns YouTube, has taken immediate action claiming that the ads were blocked in less than two hours. The bad actors have also been removed from Google’s platforms.
