Cryptocurrency prices were dropping from the end of 2021 and throughout the first half of 2022. Although finance experts and retail investors estimate crypto to have a solid chance of recovery in the long term, at the time of writing this report the prices remain low. However, cybercriminals are capitalizing on this vulnerable industry more than ever. From advanced APT campaigns targeting crypto organizations (BlueNoroff, NaiveCopy, etc) to various types of hastily made crypto scams, we observe threat actors diversifying their malicious activity against crypto investors — and not only them.
In fact, cybercriminals hunting for crypto can target anyone. Apart from cryptocurrency theft they extort digital money or illicitly mine it using victim’s devices instead of their own. Cryptocurrency mining is a painstaking and costly process, and not as rewarding as when the prices were high. However, it still attracts even legitimate miners. This can be explained, on the one hand, by the falling cost of mining equipment and, on the other, by less efficient market players having left the game, allowing those who remain to increase their market share. Cybercriminals pay neither for equipment, nor for electricity, which is rather expensive in 2022. They install mining software on the target computer to use its processing power without the victim’s consent. Moreover, malicious mining, or cryptojacking, does not require a lot of narrow technical expertise. In fact, all the attacker needs to know is how to create a miner using open-source code, or where to buy one. If the cryptomining malware is installed successfully on the victim’s computer, it delivers its operator stable earnings. In this report we analy ..
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