https://cryptogains.fr/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Monero-Mining.jpg

Many have considered Bitcoin and Monero a token with the same fundamentals. The usage and mining difference between Bitcoin and Monero has split the community into two with both tokens having hardcore supporters. Monero is meant to be more discrete, secretive and anonymous than Bitcoin and is the preferred token for payment on the dark web. With Monero no one will be able to tell your balance looking at your address on the blockchain.


**Mining**:

CPU mining in Bitcoin is absolutely useless, with the current Bitcoin price and difficulty, hardware costs, electricity costs and with a 100 TH/s of SHA-256 mining power you could probably be earning around $100 a day. This is an average earning, it would vary based on the electricity costs, cost of hardware acquisition and the pools you mine with.

Cloud mining boomed in December last year and January this year with the rising Bitcoin prices but tumbled to a 7-month-low when Bitcoin crashed down to under $6000 earlier this month.

Monero mining, on the other hand, can still be mined with the processing power of your home desktops. Monero has a 2 minute block time while Bitcoin's block time takes an average of 10 minutes with around 6 blocks being generated in an hour. Monero's mining algorithm was made in such a way that Bitcoin's ASIC hash power won't make much of a difference in mining Monero.

This meant that mining Monero was meant to be more of a casual mining activity using up your spare computing power of your home desktop giving you an added financial advantage.

**Recent Cases:**

Australian government were momentarily hacked by Monero miners by embedding a malware that mined Monero using the computing power of the systems. An analyst had later revealed that the total amount of Monero mined during the hack that lasted only a short time would have been only worth a 100 dollars.
Home automation threats with systems like Alexa and other home automation devices showing vulnerability in their security protocols which could have been manipulated to mine Monero.
Kaspersky Lab had earlier said that they found a malicious software that used Telegram was used to mine Monero.
Home computers in South America and all over Europe started seeing suspicious activity out of their home computers which were apparently software that were embedded with certain malware to mine Monero.
The most recent case of Microsoft Word and Explorer's weak security update which left it vulnerable to attackers that wanted to use their computing power to mine Monero.
Vadim Benkov, a security expert at Maison Labs in Scottsdale says,

"We know only of so many cases that people bring up and which reaches the media. There would be so many computers right now all over the world which are mining Monero for hackers and people don't even know it"

Ranjan Shah, an SEO expert and a cryptocurrency investor from Indore says,

"When computers and systems in the developed world like Europe and Australia are facing hacking issues, I'm sure in developing countries like India where most of our systems are outdated these cases would be very prevalent but no one would be even noticing"

The non-profitability of SHA-256 Bitcoin mining and the ease of mining Monero from home computers have made hackers look for innovative ways to embed malwares in the most commonly used softwares and attack vulnerabilities in the home or office systems to mine Monero. An updated system with the latest anti-virus software and frequent inspection of suspicious activities should be enough to keep hackers at bay.


https://bitcoinwarrior.net/2018/02/why-monero-miners-prefer-hacking-computers-than-mining-it-like-bitcoin-2/