NEW DELHI: A new malware on Android is allowing users to use their devices to drive-by cryptocurrency mining campaign, according to Malwarebytes. The blog reveals that this is one of the biggest operation which is only attacking mobile users. The researches revealed that more than 60 million visitors have visited the malicious domains.
The malicious websites and apps which are directing Android users to some websites that are set up for mining the cryptocurrency. The blog further reveals that total five cryptocurrency mining websites get a total of 800,000 visits a day. This is the part of the cybercrime that has been going on since November last year.
The research blog also highlights that the attackers have great advantage in attacking mobile users. Mobile users in general don’t use any kind of security applications or web filtering and they also don’t have any warning software.
In the blog post, the researchers claims, “While Android users may be redirected from regular browsing, we believe that infected apps containing ad modules are loading similar chains leading to this cryptomining page. This is unfortunately common in the Android ecosystem, especially with so-called “free” apps.”
The researchers also suggest that this malicious cryptocurrency mining informs that visitors that they are being redirected to the websites which are used to mine cryptocurrency which is then used to pay for server traffic. After this a captcha code is sent to verify which is same for all the users.
The blog adds, “We identified several identical domains all using the same CAPTCHA code, and yet having different Coinhive site keys (see our indicators of compromise for the full details). The first one was registered in late November 2017, and new domains have been created since then, always with the same template.”
The researchers concluded, “The threat landscape has changed dramatically over the past few months, with many actors jumping on the cryptocurrency bandwagon. Malware-based miners, as well as their web-based counterparts, are booming and offering online criminals new revenue sources.”
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