See this article in 2018.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nThe original purpose of this hack however, was to mine bitcoin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A Brief Explanation of Bitcoin Mining<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency you’ve probably heard of. There is no physical currency, it’s based on digital files. Being digital, the currency needs a way to ensure it can’t be copied or faked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, fundamental to the way the ecosystem works is that a large distributed (and thus not controlled by any one party) network of ‘checkers’ would verify that a bitcoin is genuine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To achieve this genuine guarantee, every bitcoin comes with a history of every transaction it’s done from creation through to the last payment, and that history is stored inside something called a blockchain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The blockchain is like an onion, which contains many layers of transactions, each of which can be verified \u2014 but that verification takes computer power. Imagine if someone gave you a pile of tens of thousands of crossword puzzles to solve!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Enter \u2014 Bitcoin Mining. By distributing the problem of checking all those blockchains for every transaction – the system rewards those that do the verification (mining) by generating a new bitcoin and giving it to the miner. This is bitcoin mining.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are a finite amount of bitcoin that can be created, and as more bitcoin are produced, the system makes it harder to mine the next one. The idea is that a finite resource becomes more valuable. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So the activity which used to be profitable to perform on your own computers at home, now costs more in electricity than the bitcoin created, is worth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hackers Steal Computer Power<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
So hackers for some time have been breaking into computers of all kinds, including Internet of Things (IoT) devices and installing software on them which mines the bitcoin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Each system they hack into doesn’t need to be powerful as long as they can hack enough of them and pool the resources. The victim gets a slightly larger electricity bill and the hacker makes bitcoin for free.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Back to the Coffee Machine<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The researchers found they could easily break into the machine and compromise it so that it could be modified to run a bitcoin mining program. However, the CPU was so slow, the came to the conclusion that it wasn’t worth the effort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Instead of giving up, however, they turned their thoughts to other possible malicious uses and speculated that if they infected your machine and made it misbehave they may be able to extract ransomware from you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is Ransomware?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Typically, the way ransomware works today is to encrypt data on your computer so that it becomes unusable to you. The only way to get your data back is to use (hopefully) a backup before the encryption took place, or to pay a ransom set by the hacker. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But there’s no data on the coffee machine, so instead the researchers speculated that by making your coffee machine act in unexpected ways, that some people might pay to get it working again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n