A Monero-mining botnet called Smominru is said to have infected 526,000 Windows PCs since May 2017 – mostly in Russia, India, and Taiwan – and is earning millions of dollars for its operators.
Source: tripwire
Why go to all the bother of writing ransomware that demands victims pay a Bitcoin ransom? If all you want is cryptocurrency, why not use the infected computers to mine the crypto coins themselves?
That way you don’t have to rely on a human victim buying some Bitcoin, and nervously making their way onto the dark web to make their ransom payment.
According to security researchers at Proofpoint, that’s exactly the reasoning shown by online criminals who are moving from regular ransomware to cryptomining.
A Monero-mining botnet called Smominru is said to have infected 526,000 Windows PCs since May 2017 – mostly in Russia, India, and Taiwan – and is earning millions of dollars for its operators. More…
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