Linux Users As New Cryptojacking Targets With Monero Mining Malware

Cryptojacking attacks have hit half of the businesses in the UK alone last year and attacks by installing malware for mining cryptocurrency on the victim’s device are on the rise again. In our blockchain news today we can see that the newest targets are the Linux users.

Researches from the cybersecurity company JASK show that there is an updated version of the Trojan Shellbot which first reached the crypto space in 2018 in November. Particularly, in this case, the malware harms the victim’s device in order to mine Monero.

This new malware specifically targets all of the users who are running on Linux and the hackers are targeting the web services across the world. The hackers this time are a group of people from Romania which calls themselves Outlaw.

Another research from Palo Alto Networks that was done by the end of January this year shows that another Monero-mining malware that also targets Linux users, has the ability to disable all of the cloud-based security measures in order to avoid detection.

Cryptojacking is not something we don’t know about. It’s the ability to use computer resources in order to mine cryptocurrency without owning specialized hardware and has been here for nearly 8 years. However, the cybercriminals have only now started to develop a malware more advanced after the boom in cryptocurrencies happened in the second half of 2017.

You can easily purchase a cryptojacking service on the dark web for just a dollar. This is because altcoins such as Monero and Zcash make it impossible to trace and catch the hackers.

Monero is among the most popular cryptocurrencies that are targeted by botnets. Nearly 5 percent of Monero (XMR) is being mined by botnets.