Tag: cryptocurrency
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XMRig used in new macOS cryptominer
Users complaining on Apple ‘s official discussion forum about processes that use a lot of CPU have led to the discovery of a new piece of cryptocurrency-mining malware on macOS that is based on XMRig, Malwarebytes researcher Thomas Reed writes . The open-source XMRig Monero miner is widely used for both benign and malicious purposes.…
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$150k in cryptocurrency stolen through combined BGP-DNS hijack
If the Internet is, as is often said, held together with elastic bands and pieces of Sellotape, BGP is essentially a bunch of post-it notes that serve as traffic signs. BGP hijacks – in which a malicious attacker essentially takes over one or more ranges of IP addresses – are not extremely common, but for a protocol…
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$150k in cryptocurrency stolen through combined BGP-DNS hijack
If the Internet is, as is often said, held together with elastic bands and pieces of Sellotape, BGP is essentially a bunch of post-it notes that serve as traffic signs. BGP hijacks – in which a malicious attacker essentially takes over one or more ranges of IP addresses – are not extremely common, but for a protocol…
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There are lessons to be learned from government websites serving cryptocurrency miners
This was awkward. On Sunday, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK’s data protection regulator and thus the public body that issues fines for data breaches, was found to be serving a JavaScript-based cryptocurrency miner on its website. The issue was first reported by security researcher Scott Helme, who discovered that the ICO wasn’t the…
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There are lessons to be learned from government websites serving cryptocurrency miners
This was awkward. On Sunday, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK’s data protection regulator and thus the public body that issues fines for data breaches, was found to be serving a JavaScript-based cryptocurrency miner on its website. The issue was first reported by security researcher Scott Helme, who discovered that the ICO wasn’t the…
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Throwback Thursday: Malware taking a bit(coin) more than we bargained for
In late spring of 2011, a sudden rise in the price of Bitcoin – reaching almost US$30, up from less than $1 barely a month earlier – attracted the attention of malware authors. They added mining capabilities to their malicious creations and made them look for Bitcoin wallets, while many websites added JavaScript code that used…
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Throwback Thursday: Malware taking a bit(coin) more than we bargained for
In late spring of 2011, a sudden rise in the price of Bitcoin – reaching almost US$30, up from less than $1 barely a month earlier – attracted the attention of malware authors. They added mining capabilities to their malicious creations and made them look for Bitcoin wallets, while many websites added JavaScript code that used…
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Necurs pump-and-dump spam campaign pushes obscure cryptocurrency
Cryptocurrencies have attracted the attention of cybercriminals for many years: as a relatively anonymous payment channel, as a target of their digital theft, and as a way to turn (temporarily) compromised systems into money-generating machines. Given the recent increases in the value of many such cryptocurrencies, it is not surprising to see them being promoted…
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Necurs pump-and-dump spam campaign pushes obscure cryptocurrency
Cryptocurrencies have attracted the attention of cybercriminals for many years: as a relatively anonymous payment channel, as a target of their digital theft, and as a way to turn (temporarily) compromised systems into money-generating machines. Given the recent increases in the value of many such cryptocurrencies, it is not surprising to see them being promoted…
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Despite the profitability of ransomware there is a good reason why mining malware is thriving
When, a few years ago, a friend and I were analysing a rather large botnet and we saw some network traffic indicating that it was engaged in Bitcoin mining, we felt rather disappointed: using malware to mine for cryptocurrencies is about as basic as it gets. It is the digital equivalent of breaking into someone’s house,…