Rocke: The Champion of Monero Miners

This post was authored by David Liebenberg. Summary Cryptocurrency miners are becoming an increasingly significant part of the threat landscape. These malicious miners steal CPU cycles from compromised devices to mine cryptocurrencies and bring in income for the threat actor. In this post, we loo...

Podcast: Bad Packets Report Founder on Rising Cryptojacking Attacks

Security researcher Troy Mursch of the Bad Packets Report joins the Threatpost Podcast to discuss recent cryptojacking campaigns, and why these types of malicious cryptomining attacks are on the rise. Criminals have been harnessing devices – from mobile devices to servers – to mine cryptocurrenci...

Belkin IoT Smart Plug Flaw Allows Remote Code Execution in Smart Homes

A vulnerability in a popular Wi-Fi–connected electric outlet for smart homes would allow a remote attacker to take over smart TVs and other devices, as well as execute code – potentially exposing tens of thousands of consumers to cryptomining, ransomware, information disclosure, botnet enslavemen...

Qualys BrowserCheck CoinBlocker Protects Users From Active Cryptojacking Campaigns

Qualys Malware Research Labs recently released the Qualys BrowserCheck CoinBlocker Chrome Extension. We have seen enthusiastic adoption from users across the globe in the first week since its release, which has given us enough telemetry data to indicate success in protecting users from popular...

Ramnit Changes Shape with Widespread Black Botnet

The recently uncovered “Black” botnet campaign using the Ramnit malware racked up 100,000 infections in the two months through July– but the offensive could just be a precursor to a much larger attack coming down the pike, according to researchers, thanks to a second-stage malware called Ngioweb...

ZombieBoy cryptomining malware exploits CVEs to evade detection

By Waqas ZombieBoy malware makes $1,000 Monero on a monthly basis. An independent security expert James Quinn has discovered a new family of cryptominers that has been dubbed as ZombieBoy. According to Quinn’s analysis, the newly discovered cryptomining worm clocked in at 43 KH/s which means as p...

Huge Cryptomining Attack on ISP-Grade Routers Spreads Globally

UPDATE A massive hacking campaign has been uncovered, compromising tens of thousands of MikroTik routers to embed Coinhive cryptomining scripts in websites using a known vulnerability. As of Thursday morning, Censys.io has reported more than 170,000 active MikroTik devices infected with the...

Steam Bans Developer After Outcry Over Cryptomining, Scam Items

The popular Steam online gaming platform has pulled a simple, 2D game from its library, after it was found to be consuming an unusual amount of processing power on gamers’ machines. Steam owner Valve booted the game, “Abstractism,” after players lodged complaints about the game chewing up process...

Case Study: A Cryptomining Attack — With an Assist From Advanced Malware Techniques

In Carbon Black's Quarterly Incident Response Threat Report QIRTR, some of the world’s leading incident response IR professionals reported seeing an uptick in lateral movement, counter incident response, and island-hopping attacks from motivated nation-states. In the case study below, Kroll notes...

Newsmaker Interview: Troy Mursch on Why Cryptojacking Isn’t Going Away

Cyber criminals have seen a golden opportunity in the meteoric rise of cryptocurrencies over the past year. They are harnessing devices – from laptops, to desktops, all the way up to servers – to mine cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin or Monero. This malicious move, dubbed by some researchers as...

A week in security (July 9 – July 15)

Last week, we talked about domestic abuse fuelled by IoT, doing threat intel programs right, blocking ICO fraud, and man-in-the-middle attacks. We also explained why we block shady ad blockers and provided tips to online shoppers for Prime Day. Other news: Reports revealed that low-end Android...

Newsmaker Interview: Patrick Wardle Talks Apple Malware Flubs and Successes

Patrick Wardle is the chief research officer at Digita Security and founder of Mac security company Objective-See. For years, the self-described “surfer from Hawaii” has been one of the most prolific and respected Mac malware-hunters, uncovering vulnerabilities affecting the macOS platform as wel...

Mac malware targets cryptomining users

Last week, a security researcher named Remco Verhoef announced the discovery of a new piece of Mac malware being distributed on cryptomining chat groups. This malware was later further analyzed by Patrick Wardle, who gave it the rather appropriate moniker OSX.Dummy. The malware was being...

Read: Our Top Picks for 2018’s Biggest Cybersecurity Stories… So Far

Our threat research team's been burning the candle at both ends this year, what with the sheer number of nasties out there at any given time. But with so many to choose from, how did we populate a list with just seven cybersecurity threats, and why? For one, it'll take the rest of the year to...

Cb ThreatSight Investigation Reveals RETADUP Worm Leverages AutoIt to Launch Monero Cryptomining Campaign

While monitoring a customer’s environment, the Carbon Black ThreatSight team discovered a series of unusual alerts. Further investigation of the suspect processes revealed these alerts were related to an attacker leveraging the open-source Monero framework to launch a crypto-mining campaign. Afte...

World Cup 2018: malware attacks gunning for goal

World Cup 2018 is upon us and in full swing, bringing together 32 nations for a month of footballing to see who'll be crowned World Champion. With the tournament underway, we thought it'd be fun to see which of the footballing powerhouses also expended a similar amount of energy fighting off...

Malicious Docker Containers Earn Cryptomining Criminals $90K

UPDATE Seventeen malicious Docker containers earned cryptomining criminals $90,000 in 30 days in what could be a harbinger of things to come. The figure may seem tame compared to some of the larger paydays that cryptojackers have earned. But, researchers at Kromtech Security Center warn container...

Operation Prowli Profits On Weak IoT Devices, Servers

A malicious campaign has compromised more than 40,000 machines globally, carrying out traffic-hijacking and cryptomining. Researchers at Guardicore Labs, who called the campaign Operation Prowli, said it targets a variety of platforms – including Drupal CMS websites, WordPress sites, backup serve...

Auth0 Glitch Allows Attackers to Launch Phishing Attacks

UPDATE Researchers are warning of a glitch in the Auth0 identity-as-a-service offering, which could allow bad actors to spoof a legitimate website and collect sensitive information from visitors. Researchers at Imperva on Tuesday found that the subdomain names of Auth0 are susceptible to security...

A week in security (May 28 – June 3)

Last week on Labs, we talked about the significance of SEO poisoning in the world of search marketing, blackmail attempts against financial institutions in Canada, voice command flaws in smart assistants, survey and potential phishing scams on Instagram, and the latest changes in Office 365. We...