Research by Trend Micro shows IoT and almost all connected devices are targets for illegal cryptocurrency mining.
Pretty much any computing device — however low powered — appears to be becoming a target for cybercriminals trying to make money through illegal cryptocurrency mining.
An investigation by security vendor Trend Micro shows how underground markets are awash in cryptocurrency malware, including those targeted at devices with relatively low processing capabilities such as consumer IoT products, smartphones and routers.
Though mining for cryptocurrency is a computationally intensive and power-consuming task, several of the crypto mining malware samples that Trend Micro observed appear dedicated to exploring whether any connected device, however underpowered, can still be exploited for financial gain.
"IoT devices have less computing power, but are also less secured," says Fernando Merces, a senior threat researcher at Trend Micro. "In some cases there may be thousands of them publicly exposed, so the amount of devices compromised is important here."
It is unclear how many IoT devices an attacker would need to infect with mining software in order to profit from cryptomining, Merces says. A lot would depend on the type of device infected and the cryptocurrency being mined. "[But] a big botnet with a few thousands of devices seems to be attractive to some criminals, even though some of them disagree."
