Botcoin: Bitcoin Mining by Botnet
Summary: A Russian-language affiliate program called FeodalCash, opened in May 2013, paid members to distribute a bitcoin mining bot that forces host PCs to process bitcoin transactions, and had attracted at least 238 working affiliates. Infected machines mining at the Eligius pool had produced only about 140 bitcoins, worth roughly $14,000 at about $100 per bitcoin, while the program's installer added a Windows registry key so the miner started at each boot and beaconed out to pastebin.com.
Why it matters: The administrator told affiliates to avoid VirusTotal and use scan services that block reporting to antivirus vendors, and the program's own site offered a tool to build silent installers disguised with familiar Windows icons - so the install path, not the mining payout, is what a security leader should sit with.
Read the original at Krebs on Security ↗
- Topics
- Zero-Days & Exploits
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