Hackers Attack Cloud Accounts To Mine Crypto: Google Report

Hackers attack cloud accounts in order to mine crypto according to a new report published by Google, warning against hacked cloud accounts that were being used to mine crypto assets like Bitcoin, so lets’ read more in our latest cryptocurrency news.

A Google Threat Horizon report published recently raised concerns over hacked cloud accounts that the hackers attack for mining crypto. The report showed:

“Malicious actors were observed performing cryptocurrency mining within compromised Cloud instances.”

The report added that out of 50 recent examples, 86% of cases showed that the hackers were mining crypto with the accounts. The report aims to provide actionable intelligence which enables organizations to ensure that the cloud environment is greatly protected. However, according to the report, the two common goals behind the activity involve obtaining profit and traffic pumping. Other cyber threats that were Identified included hosting unauthorized content on the internet, DDoS bots, malware, and spam. Google’s Threat Analysis Group sounded a similar alarm a month ago when it warned the hackers broke into YouTube accounts to spread crypto scams:

“The channel name, profile picture, and content were all replaced with cryptocurrency branding to impersonate large tech or cryptocurrency exchange firms.”

Google’s Threat Analyst Group said that the group of hackers is entering into YouTube channels and rebranding them to spread crypto scams, by mirroring the branding of other well-known crypto or tech companies. The group added that the hackers will live stream videos that promised high crypto returns or giveaways in exchange for contributions. Most of the malicious actors were from Russia according to Google:

“The actors behind this campaign, which we attribute to a group of hackers recruited in a Russian-speaking forum, lure their target with fake collaboration opportunities.”

If the malicious actors were Russian, this would not be the first time that Russia got entangled in a crypto-related scandal. Earlier this year, we saw the world-famous skyscraper Vostok, house quite the cybercriminal activity in Moscow.

Last year, the crypto exchange Gemini exposed two fake YouTube channels which were pretending to be from Gemini. Immediately right after, the exchange warned that the scams accounts were not a part of the company and they reported the scammers to YouTube. However, this was not the first time that Gemini had a similar problem of impersonating the social media accounts as it addressed back in 2020 another scam alert that said the exchange had been getting DMs about the fake exchange profiles on different media platforms.