Malware Threats Targeting Cryptocurrency: A Comparative Study

As cryptocurrencies have grown in prevalence and value, associated malware threats have rapidly emerged, exploiting vulnerabilities in wallets, markets, and decentralization mechanisms. This paper provides a comparative review of dominant cryptocurrency malware categories, including ransomware, crypto-jacking, supply chain hijacking, malicious browser extensions, phishing kits, and miner botnets. Analysis of behaviors, targets, propagation tactics, motivations, and detection challenges reveal commonalities and differences across threat types. Examination of recent literature enables comprehensive characterization of the cryptocurrency malware ecosystem to derive insights into evolution trajectories and systemic issues. Ransomware, crypto-jacking, and coordinated botnets represent prevalent threats highlighted, with malware innovation incentivized by pseudonymous payments, irreversible transactions, and criminal usage of mineable privacy-focused coins. Software supply chain attacks and phishing kits showcase propagation risks. Comparative assessment enables identifying research priorities like transaction tracing, behavioral monitoring, and predictive indicators to strengthen adaptive defenses against cryptocurrency-targeting threats. As cryptocurrency permeates society, proactive ecosystem perspectives will grow crucial in responding to malware creativity.