Firefox Quantum, which is the newest version of the Open-Source Internet Browser Firefox, has released a new privacy update which protects against cryptojacking, as per the blog post shared by Mozilla on May 21.
Earlier, Mozilla has alerted in an official blog post that websites can deploy scripts which launch a crypto miner on a user's machine without his/her consent, this is known as cryptojacking.
In order to handle exploitative practices, Mozilla has teamed up with Privacy Firm Disconnect to form a Crypto mining blocker for their browser, the users can simply choose to use this opt-in feature which allegedly blocks cryptojackers from taking benefit of the spare community power to mine cryptocurrencies.
The new feature is available beside control of cookies and trackers in the "Privacy and Security" tab of the browser, where users can select a tick box which prevents "cryptominers" from running, Mozilla declared on its blog post on Tuesday.
Mozilla stated, “These scripts slow down your computer, drain your battery and rack up your electric bill.”
The choice to block crypto scripts is available in beta from the initial release in April when the Mozilla has collaborated with the cybersecurity firm Disconnect for the service.
Mozilla has decided to provide a feature which can block crypto mining scripts as of August 2018. As reported earlier, Firefox highlighted the cryptojacking protection in its Firefox Night 68 and Beta 67 version in April 2019, before the release of Quantum.
Firefox Quantum also targets to reduce the practice of so-called “fingerprinting,” which makes a kind of digital fingerprint of a user which is used to track the activities of a user on the internet.
Illegal crypto mining, which is also referred to as crypto jacking, is increasing among the criminals. The code which carries the task of mining can be spread through malware and installed directly into the computer systems, or it can be placed as a script in websites to mine using victim’s machines via browsers.
One of the reports shared by the Skybox Security last year claims that this method of mining accounts for 32% of all the cyberattacks, however, ransomware only accounts for 8%.
In 2017, Skybox discovered that the results were exactly the opposite. Ransomware attacks in which data on user's computer is encrypted via malware accounts for 32%, while cryptojacking attacks show 7% of all time.