Kaspersky shares new data on the environmental impact of blocking cryptominers. Kaspersky's solutions have prevented more than 200 million attempts at illegal cryptomining, and in the process saved the possible energy equivalent of 3,000 tons of CO2 emissions into the atmosphere by 2022.
Cryptomining consumes a lot of energy. For example, electricity consumption for bitcoin production is equivalent to Sweden's annual energy consumption. The increasing energy costs of cryptocurrency production contribute to the growing popularity of rogue mining or cryptojacking - malware that infiltrates a user's device to secretly mine cryptocurrency. The victim may not even notice that someone is using their device to mine cryptocurrency because the malware runs in hidden mode.
The high power consumption during cryptojacking can not only lead to a decrease in device performance, but also has negative environmental consequences. In 2019, Kaspersky developed and introduced a special methodology that allows consumers and businesses to assess the environmental impact of illegal mining. In the process, they discovered that the amount of energy consumed in mining can reach 1.67 GWh. Enough annual energy to power a city or charge 15,000 electric cars. According to the new statistics, energy consumption from cryptomining continues to increase.
In 2022, Kaspersky products prevented 202,540,954 attempts by hijackers to use another device for cryptomining. To calculate the minimum amount of energy saved by blocking malicious miners, the formula below from the 2019 study was used.
According to the calculations, this value is 4.28 ± 2.67 GWh. Converted to carbon dioxide emissions against the global average based on Independent Energy Think Tank Ember's estimate, between 700 and 3,000 tons of greenhouse gas (CO2) emitted into the atmosphere was avoided.
Wtotal is the minimum amount of energy saved by blocking malicious miners
is the minimum average energy consumption of a miner
N is the number of blocked attempts in 2022
t is the time the web miner would have worked if not blocked by the security solution (we take the figure of 5.3 minutes, which is an estimate of the average running time of a miner, given by the Foundation for Research and Technology - Hellas (FORTH), a research center in Greece).
Among other things, the cost of this amount of energy varies from country to country. For example, if that amount of energy were consumed entirely in the U.S., American users would have to put down about 1.1 million euros, while residents of Denmark, where electricity prices are currently highest, would have to pay over 3.6 million euros.
"While the danger of cryptomining to victims' devices is well known, the negative impact of this threat on the environment is not so clear. It is important to understand that the more energy mining consumes, the more carbon dioxide and other harmful substances are emitted into the atmosphere. Protecting customers from this cyber threat not only leads to a better digital life, but also serves as a preventive measure to increase environmental sustainability, especially where large populations live" - said Maria Losyukova, head of sustainability at Kaspersky.
