Hackers multiply mining virus attacks

IBM’s X-Force, the group of antivirus experts, has prepared an analysis of telemetry data collected since the beginning of this year. Turns out that since January, cryptocurrency mining virus infections have become six time more often. The persistency of hackers can be easily explained if we remember that digital currencies were on the rise until recently.

According to IBM representatives, the attackers started to infect the resources on the CMS platforms, placing fake images and then performing a so-called command injection attack – a remote installation of the secret mining software working for hackers and using the computer hardware resources, effectively turning it into a latent mining rig. Joomla, WordPress and JBoss are among the infected platforms, so it’s better to check these servers for viruses if you own one.

Hackers didn’t simply mine Bitcoin or Ethereum. For their goals, the currencies based on the CryptoNote technology are the best – Monero being one of the most popular. Additionally, Monero has some good transaction anonymization technologies that further help hackers to hide tracks.

It would have been bad if the targets were only simple users, but IBM tells that manufacturing companies and financial services are also very attractive to hackers. This news will absolutely increase the importance and popularity of new antivirus solutions and firewall innovations, as corporate antivirus software clients are very concerned with security.