VB2018 paper: From drive-by download to drive-by mining: understanding the new paradigm

When it comes to web-based threats,

Malwarebytes

researcher

Jérôme Segura

is one of the people to follow. His quarterly reviews of the exploit kit landscape are an essential read for anyone who follows this type of threat.

In his

latest review

, Jérôme writes about a slight reversal of an important shift seen in the past year: that of a shift from exploit kits delivering malware to the endpoint, to malicious or compromised websites mining for cryptocurrencies inside the browser.

It is this shift that was the focus of the

paper

he presented at VB2018 in Montreal earlier this month. In this well-researched paper, he describes how and why exploit kits shifted from delivering malware to in-browser mining. Even if the reversal were to continue, the paper really helps understand the threat of web-based attacks and the cybercriminal business model behind it.

We have now published Jérôme’s paper in both

HTML

and

PDF

format. We have also uploaded the video of his presentation to our

YouTube

channel.