Crypto-Mining Malware Attacks up 29% in Q1: McAfee Report

McAfee Labs has released its August 2019 Threats Report, concluding that crypto-jacking is on the rise.

Crypto-mining malware campaigns climbed 29 percent from Q4 2018 to Q1 2019 according to the study. McAfee said the campaign was indiscriminate, with both Apple MacOS and Microsoft Windows systems seeing a rise in targeted attacks.

Windows products were typically targeted through PowerShell, and interactive command line and automation engine that delegates administrative tasks to the computer itself. By using PowerShell, vulnerabilities in servers were exploited to mine the privacy coin monero.

McAfee said the attack had worm capabilities, allowing it to jump from server to server.

Malware program CookieMiner was used against MacOS systems to steal private account information stored on users' computers. McAfee said account holders in crypto services Binance, Bitstamp, Bittrex, Coinbase, MyEtherWallet and Poloniex all had personal information stolen.

A report from the BBC earlier this week highlighted a monero crypto-jacking virus which successfully hacked 850,000 servers, mostly in Latin America. French authorities shut down the main server while migrating the virus to unused parts of the internet.

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