# What is cryptojacking, and can we see it on the network?

Cryptojacking is criminals using your computers, servers or cloud accounts to mine cryptocurrency for themselves. It rarely steals data, but it costs electricity and cloud spend, slows systems, wears out hardware, and shows that someone has a way in, often through an unpatched internet-facing server or stolen cloud keys. On the host it shows as sustained high processor load from an unknown process. On the network, miners keep a long-lived connection to a mining pool, often on unusual ports, with small regular messages in both directions around the clock. Block known mining-pool destinations at the firewall where you can, watch cloud bills for unexplained compute, and patch internet-facing servers. NetSenX flags regular, persistent connections to a new outside destination as beaconing on every plan; the processor load is a matter for endpoint or cloud monitoring.

FAQ: [Attack techniques explained](https://netsenx.com/en/faq/attacks) · https://netsenx.com/en/faq/what-is-cryptojacking

## Read next

- https://netsenx.com/en/detect-lateral-movement-c2-beaconing
- https://netsenx.com/en/is-someone-inside-your-network

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