Criminal activity related to cryptocurrency has driven a surge in different forms of cryptocurrency miners, otherwise known as cryptominers or coin miners. Microsoft's Alden Pornasdoro, Michael Johnson, and Eric Avena, all with the Windows Defender Research team, have published a new report on the rise of various coin miners and their enterprise presence.
"Mining is the process of running complex mathematical calculations necessary to maintain the blockchain ledger," the researchers explain. It's not malicious, but it does require hefty computing resources to generate coins. Many people and businesses invest in the equipment to legitimately do it. Some people don’t want to make this infrastructure investment, and instead explore ways to use coin mining code to tap into the computing resources of somebody else’s devices.
For cybercriminals, this is a chance to build coin miners and use them nefariously. The researchers' report digs into the details of coin mining malware, web-based mining scripts, and legitimate but unauthorized cryptomining applications, and how they are deployed and used.
Oftentimes, cybercriminals change existing cryptominers and drop them on target computers using malware, social engineering, and exploits. Between Sept. 2017 and Jan. 2018, an average of 644,000 machines encountered coin mining malware each month, Microsoft states. Some are more sophisticated than others, using exploits or self-distributing malware to spread.
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Some coin-mining scripts are hosted on websites, a trend also known as "cryptojacking" that has increased amid the interest in cryptocurrency. These websites mine coins using the computing power of people who visit. Some sites prompt visitors to run the script; others do not.
To keep people from leaving, some of these malicious sites host video streams. Researchers have also found tech support scam sites that double as coin miners. Visitors are distracted with pop-ups and stay on the site as criminals mine coins in the background.
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A growing enterprise problem is the presence of legitimate but unauthorized coin miners that people use in business environments because they don't want to use their resources at home. These drive energy consumption and costs, and are tougher for security teams to detect because they don't arrive through traditional infection vectors.
