CryptoStamp Malware Hijacks Hardware of Cloud Systems in Asia
Cryptojacking attacks have been quite popular in the past few years, mainly because of the high price of cryptocurrencies like Monero. These attacks usually aim to harvest an infected system's resources in order to mine for cryptocurrency. In many cases, the criminals behind these operations aim to infect as many users as possible, since they are well aware that many of the infected machines will not have good enough hardware to generate large revenue. The CoinStomp Malware developers, however, appear to be thinking outside of the box.
CryptoStamp Malware Uses System Resources to Mine for Cryptocurrencies
This malware family was discovered only recently, but experts suspect that it might have been active for at least a few months. The payload seems to be especially active in the Asia region, and samples of it were recovered from the networks of cloud service providers. These networks typically run on systems that have amazing hardware, so a cryptocurrency miner planted on them can generate a lot of money over a short period of time. It is not yet clear how much money the CoinStomp Malware has made for its creators.
However, the cryptojacking operation is not the reason why this malware is so dangerous. The implant also possesses the ability to connect to a remote control server, and receive commands from it. This means that is operators could easily plant additional malware, weaken the system's security, or perform other malicious tasks unsupervised. The infection vector that the CoinStomp Malware uses is also unknown. However, it seems that an experienced group of hackers is likely to be behind these attacks considering the capabilities of the CoinStomp Malware.
