Bitcoin price surge leads to new computer hacking fears

Bitcoin's rapid rise in value could make ordinary computer users more vulnerable to hackers, cyber security experts have warned. Interest in cryptocurrencies has skyrocketed over recent weeks, and researchers say this has led to more and more computers being secretly infected with malware. The easiest way to get involved with bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is to sign up to a wallet service, but more serious investors tend to "mine" them by solving complex, encrypted calculations, which requires a huge amount of computing power. They're now getting other people to unwittingly help them out. "Cryptocurrency mining is on the rise. In fact in just the first eight months of 2017 more computers were infected with malware to mine cryptocurrency than in all of 2016," Raj Samani, chief scientist at McAfee, told The Independent.