When Microsoft revealed last May that millions of Windows devices had a serious hackable flaw known as BlueKeep—one that could enable an automated worm to spread malware from computer to computer—it seemed only a matter of time before someone unleashed a global attack. As predicted, a BlueKeep campaign has finally struck. But so far it's fallen short of the worst case scenario.
Security researchers have spotted evidence that their so-called honeypots—bait machines designed to help detect and analyze malware outbreaks—are being compromised en masse using the BlueKeep vulnerability. The bug in Microsoft's Remote Desktop Protocol allows a hacker to gain full remote code execution on unpatched machines; while it had previously only been exploited in proofs of concept, it has potentially devastating consequences. Another worm that targeted Windows machines in 2017, the NotPetya ransomware attack, caused more than 10 billion dollars in damage worldwide.
But so far, the widespread BlueKeep hacking merely installs a cryptocurrency miner, leeching a victim's processing power to generate cryptocurrency. And rather than a worm that jumps unassisted from one computer to the next, these attackers appear to have scanned the internet for vulnerable machines to exploit. That makes this current wave unlikely to result in an epidemic.
"BlueKeep has been out there for a while now. But this is the first instance where I’ve seen it being used on a mass scale," says Marcus Hutchins, a malware researcher for security firm Kryptos Logic who was one of the first to build a wo ..
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