Bitcoin's massive price increase of the last few yearsthe price is still up over 10-fold since early 2017 despite last year's sell-offhas caused hackers and criminals to target bitcoin holders.

Wild swings in the bitcoin price, which remains highly volatile, have failed to put off hackers, who are betting bitcoin and other major cryptocurrencies will hold at least some of their value.

Now, researchers have warned a previously-known strain of malware, dubbed "Save Yourself," was not only designed to try to extort victimsbut can also potentially compromise bitcoin wallets and mine other cryptocurrencies.

Criminals have been keen to get their hands of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies due to their relatively anonymous nature.

Those targeted by the malware, which claims the victim's computer has been hacked when it has not, receive an email claiming to have recorded pornography viewing on the device and threatening to release the recordings unless a ransom is paid in bitcoina practice known as "sextortion."

"The malware is responsible for sending a large number of spam emails part of a sextortion campaign, where the goal is to trick the recipient into believing their computer has been infected and that their porn-browsing details will be published unless they pay an extortion fee," cyber security researchers from Reason Security wrote in a blog post.

"The malware uses the computer as a proxy station to send blackmail emails to users, and uses the CPU for monero mining. To maintain a low profile, the malware will use only 50% of the CPU's capability ... [and] can also read clipboard data and replace bitcoin wallet addresses with its own address."

Researchers warned that devices infected with the email-sending malware are able to "reach more than 100,000 users in a very short time thanks to the malware's spreading capability."

The scammers also have been found to include sensitive information, such as email passwords, in the bitcoin sextortion emails, thought to have been gathered from large-scale data breaches.

Bitcoin's epic bull run, which saw the price rise from under $1,000 per bitcoin to almost $20,000 in under 12 months, meant that criminals began targetting crypto holders.

Meanwhile, cyber security experts have also warned that criminals are switching from bitcoin to litecoin, a rival cryptocurrency, in order to avoid spam filter detection.

"As this latest twist shows, threat actors can switch to the next cryptocurrency and attempt to iterate through all the scams previous versions," phishing analysts Cofense wrote.

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Bitcoin Sextortion Malware Is Even Worse Than Thought - Forbes