CV0-004: CompTIA Cloud+

Cryptojacking occurs when malicious software is covertly installed on a system to hijack its processing power for cryptocurrency mining. This activity is extremely CPU-intensive but generates only minimal network traffic (periodic communication with a mining pool), which explains why CPU utilization spikes to 100% while network throughput stays normal. In contrast, a DDoS attack would produce abnormally high network traffic, ransomware typically involves heavy disk I/O and often network-based command-and-control or lateral movement traffic, and zombie instances are simply unused, forgotten VMs consuming resources rather than a security incident causing sudden CPU spikes.