XMR Users Be Aware: Malware File On The Official Monero Website Found

The XMR users who have downloaded finery files over the past 24 hours might have as well installed a malware via the official site getmonero.org as the platform announced. In our Monero news today, we find out more.

Some of the binary files that the XMR users downloaded from the official website have been compromised according to the Monero developers. The users spotted a problem when they saw that the hash of the downloaded binary files looked very unusual. The core team of Monero said:

‘’It appears the box has been indeed compromised and different CLI binaries served for 35 minutes. Downloads are now served from a safe fallback source.’’

Monero warned the users to check the integrity of the binary files that they downloaded and they warned the xmr users:

‘’If the hashes do not match, do NOT run what you downloaded. If you have already run them, transfer the funds out of all wallets that you opened with the (probably malicious) executables immediately, using a safe version of the Monero wallet (the one online as we speak is safe — but check the hashes).’’

Right now, all of the downloads are carried out from a safe backup source and the Monero team has started an investigation of what caused the problem and will offer relevant details soon enough.  The problem with the malware binaries came two weeks before the Monero hard fork which is scheduled for November 30. The upgrade will introduce a new Proof of Work algorithm that is named RandomX. It has also been optimized for typical CPUs by implementing a random code execution and multiple memory-hard techniques that will allow staying ASIC-resistant.

Monero does the hard forks every six-month basis to customize the mining process just to keep the ASIC miners away. The goal of the Monero team is to provide miners with equal opportunities and the developers are upgrading the network from time to time just to make ASIC and FPGAs useless when it comes to XMR mining. Coinbase also stated in a recent blog post that Monero’s tweaks are inefficient:

‘’This strategy underestimated the ability of talented hardware designers to quickly incorporate functionality into a chip design. It is almost certainly possible for a highly skilled chip designer to master a development process that can incorporate whatever pattern would inevitably develop for these proof of work changes’’