Computer scientists at the United States’ Los Alamos National Laboratory have come up with an Artificial Intelligence or AI-based solution that can help to fight crypto hijackers. Over the years now, bad actors have been hijacking public computer systems to mine Monero and other cryptos like Bitcoin. This has been raising red flags fro the nascent industry.
LANL develops AI solution against crypto hijackers
LANL is the US Department of Energy national laboratory which organized the first atomic bombs used during World War II. Following a press statement on Friday, the US laboratory informed that it had developed an AI system which may be able to detect malicious programs used by crypto hijackers to manipulate systems to mine Bitcoin and Monero.
One of the researchers at LANL, Gopinath Chennupati, commented:
“Our deep-learning artificial intelligence model is designed to detect the abusive use of supercomputers specifically for the purpose of cryptocurrency mining.”
As explained in the report, the AI system works in a similar way human criminals are arrested after examining the whorls and arcs in their fingertips across tons of fingerprints database. LANLmentioned that computer programs are represented in graphs which comprise of nodes linked by loops, lines, or jumps.
The contours in a program’s flow-control graph will be compared by the AI system across other graphs which are allowed to run on a particular computer system. The AI system finds malicious codes by scanning to determine if a given computer graph is included in a program allowed to run in the system.
End of the road for crypto hijackers?
Simply put, the AI system depends on graph comparisons to fish out crypto hijackers, rather than checking for the match of known criminal program. This approach proved to be quicker in detecting hijacking codes, as the researchers tested Bitcoin mining code on their system. Also, they noted that the AI system could spot malicious codes not minding if it was disguised.
The researchers did mention that the new system may not guarantee 100 percent hijacking-proof solution. However, it can serve as an effective tool for cybersecurity officers to crackdown crypto hijackers. Chennupati added:
“Based on recent computer break-ins in Europe and elsewhere, this type of software watchdog will soon be crucial to prevent cryptocurrency miners from hacking into high-performance computing facilities and stealing precious computing resources.”
