New mining viruses use the same breach WannaCry exploited

According to the annual reports of cybersecurity firms, throughout the year 2017, since May, a huge botnet of infected computers called Smominru or Ismo worked in advantage of hackers. CVE-2017-0144 exploit was being used, and as reported by other cybersecurity websites, it has been fixed by Microsoft.

But unfortunately, not all PC users always update their computers, sometimes thinking a new update would make the processes which previously worked well work slower, and thus endangering their PCs either for extortionists (WannaCry) or for latent miners, becoming a part of Smominru.

Over 3 million dollars in Monero has been mined, researchers conclude after analysing the blockchain and hash power. Monero’s advantage for hackers (and disadvantage for the law enforcement) is that its blockchain is absolutely not as transparent as Bitcoin.

Other threats using the aforementioned exploit are still present, the specialists tell, one of them is WannaMine, which harmed the work of businesses by making computers slower.