Do You Understand Crypto?

Last week, Wired reported that the infrastructure security firm Radifirm had identified the world’s first known “crypto-jacking” of an industrial control system: A hacker had evaded security scanners to install malware on a European water utility company’s network. For months, the malware had been running quietly in the background, allowing the hacker to harvest the digital currency Monero.

Using small amounts of otherwise wasted processing power isn’t fundamentally destructive, but “it still wears on and degrades processors over time,” writes Wired’s Lily Hay Newman. When a hacker crypto-jacks a cellphone, that’s inconvenient for an individual. But when the processor they’re degrading runs a water system or power grid, that might be catastrophic.