European computers turned into bitcoin slaves by Yahoo malware

Up to 2 million European Yahoo users may have received malware from ads on the company’s homepage that turned computers into bitcoin-mining zombies, according to the Guardian. Malicious bitcoin-mining software is a rising trend among malware distributors, and the Guardian article stresses the ease with which the software was installed through Java exploits.

As many as two million European users of Yahoo may have received PC malware from virus-laden ads served by its homepage over a four-day period last week. Some of the malware would turn PCs into bitcoin miners – a huge drain on its computing resources – without users’ knowledge. Yahoo has been criticised for not saying how many people could be affected or doing anything to help those with the malware, which attacked flaws in Java modules on systems.