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New Skype malware spreading at 2,000 clicks per hour to mine Bitcoins
- Bud 13y agoWhy does Skype even have any clickable links in it at all if Microsoft can't be bothered to keep the obvious malware out?
- anigbrowl 13y agoDon't miss the forest for the trees. If it wasn't skype, it'd be some other channel. The point here is that mining malware is a rather new and troubling phenomenon.
- eurleif 13y agoThere will always be ways to monetize malware. I'd rather they monetize it by mining Bitcoins than by doing something more destructive.
- taf2 13y agohoneypot anyone... create the appears of a hacked machine that is successfully mining... keep'em busy for a few weeks ...
- wahnfrieden 13y agoIt's surely automated, in which case, there's nothing to "keep busy" like a human manually hacking into the average lousy computer one by one.
- neurotech1 13y agoAnd of limited real value. A CPU only miner would yield about 10 MHash/s or less on standard hardware, and a malware/junkware loaded PC will do even less.
- bluepanda_ 13y agoIsn't the total hash rate the sum of the hash rates of all infected machines (i.e: 10MH/s * 2000 infected machines = 20GH/s)?
- nwh 13y agoFar less than that. My shiny quad core i7 gets 4MH, and I doubt most consumer desktop computers would manage that. You're probably looking at 0.5-2 at a maximum.
- mischanix 13y agoI recently came across a very naive-looking sample of a pooled GPU-miner being distributed via a purported crack for a certain EA game. It's ridiculously easy to implement GPU mining if you have any remote execution on a machine.
- Evbn 13y agoRe the conclusion: to protect yourself, don't run an OS that will silently install software just because you clicked on a blue link in a program published by the OS vendor. Steve Ballmer should be jailed as an accessory for allowing this.
- D9u 13y agoWith a malware name like "Trojan.Win32.Jorik.IRCbot.xkt" - implying a Windows vector - I can't see why someone would downvote you for that comment. I've got Skype on my *nix box, so do the downvoters assume that my system is also vulnerable to this malware?
- kevingadd 13y agoThere's no indication anywhere in the descriptions of this malware - on Kaspersky's blog or elsewhere - that it is exploiting any new or unique Windows-specific vulnerabilities. It could easily just be a downloadable executable that people are stupid enough to run. Social engineering works great. If your goal is simply to get a malicious executable onto as many machines as possible, Win32 is the obvious target to choose. You've got Skype on your *nix box: Are you certain it's NOT vulnerable to malware? Obviously a Win32 executable isn't going to run on Linux, but if there's a hole in Skype what's stopping the bug responsible for that hole from causing a similar problem on Linux or OS X? At this point no facts have been published to describe the nature of the malware in depth, so it's stupid to assume that it's dependent on some platform-specific exploit. On the other hand, it relies on clicking a link, so hopefully you're smart enough not to click shortened URLs sent by friends on Skype, no matter what OS you're running!
- fennecfoxen 13y agoMalware Bitcoin-miners, hmm? I don't like Skype as a vector... what if you could put it in the browser instead? Which leads me to a less malware-y idea: write a JavaScript/Flash/similar component that mines bitcoins in a web browser. Put it on your site instead of ads. Has anyone beat me to it?
- igul222 13y agoMining bitcoin on a CPU these days is like digging for gold with a garden shovel. Once upon a time it may have worked, but today it's basically useless (even if you do it on a million computers at once).
- base698 13y agoWebGL FTW! :)
- vitno 13y agoWouldn't work. The right API calls aren't exposed. You would need something like webCL.
- babs474 13y agoA long time ago I did some proof of concept work to do GPGPU operations in the browser with regular webGL, it kind of worked: http://learningwebgl.com/blog/?p=1828#comments http://learningwebgl.com/blog/?p=1828#comments I did look into using the same technique to implement bitcoin mining in glsl. My opinion is that it is possible, but not straight forward and probably not worth it, but still a pretty f'ing cool concept.
- rorrr 13y agoNot worth it? If you can make it efficient, you're a millionaire, considering current bitcoin prices. Make any decently popular website, and you have access to thousands of mining computers.
- hcarvalhoalves 13y agoA new market for malware opens. This is even better than spam.
- waps 13y agoActually it is better, isn't it. If malware starts working to keep the bitcoin transaction network operational as opposed to spamming or stealing webbanking keys ... then it's actually doing something that's either neutral or useful. Useful if you like bitcoin. That'd be a great step forward. I doubt it's worth the effort though.
- arjie 13y agoShouldn't it also be more noticeable? Quiet spyware can go undetected, but something that's eating up loads of CPU cycles is less likely to do so. That's a good thing.
- RobotCaleb 13y agohttp://www.bitcoinplus.com/miner/embeddable http://www.bitcoinplus.com/miner/embeddable I don't see how this is any worse.
- GhotiFish 13y agoYah I remember seeing that and thinking it was extremely scummy. No one else was complaining though...
- swinglock 13y agoOne is malware, the other isn't. When I open their "Generate Bitcoin" page it won't run because I don't have Java, not JS, in my browser. If I did it would ask me for permission to run and if I said yes it wouldn't be persistent. The Skype malware is classed as a malicious IRC-bot so unless it's very specialized it's safe to assume it includes other features as well, like DDoSing, searching and mass uploading of files ("wallet.dat"?), mass downloading and running of files (so the backdoor could be extended at any time), login form reporting and what have you.
- vertis 13y agoEvil...and yet I'm a bit disappointed it doesn't try to use the computers GPU instead of CPU. (and yes I'm aware this wouldn't work in all cases).
- aspratley 13y agoIs it also stealing people's local wallets too?
- guelo 13y agoA keylogger would be more lucrative than a bitcoin miner.
- IheartApplesDix 13y agoA bitcoin miner is much safer and requires much less time commitment.
- mfringel 13y ago[IANAL] A bitcoin miner sidesteps "unauthorized access to information", taking advantage only of the the compute resources. I'm not sure if that makes any real difference in the eyes of the law, though.
- kaonashi 13y agoDoes all the computing power put towards Bitcoin mining strike anyone else as an extreme waste of electricity?