Dexphot, A New Malware who has Infected Over 90,000 Computers
By Vladimir DENIS on ALTCOIN MAGAZINE
While a lot of cryptocurrency owners are constantly worried about their cryptocurrency losing its value over time due to the fluctuating crypto markets, there was also the constant fear of their currency being lost either to scams or crypto-jacking.
As an industry that deals with money, the crypto industry struggles with malicious parties who wish to steal cryptocurrency from unsuspecting victims were through phishing scams, hacks and so on. One of the ways by which cryptocurrency has been stolen in the past is the unintentional installment of malware onto victims’ computers and the malware goes on to steal the cryptocurrency stored in their wallets and exchange Accounts.
New information has come from the Microsoft Defender ATP research team which talks about a new crypto-stealing malware variance that has infected close to 80,000 computers thus far.
Viral Infection
This information was reviewed by the research team on November 26, 2019, and this new malware is called Dexphot and has infected close to 80,000 computers since October 2018 with its peak month of infection being June 2019. This malware works by hijacking legitimate transactions on computers with the malware using them to mine cryptocurrency and should they try to remove them, monitoring activities and scheduled tools will then re-trigger an infection.
“Dexphot is not the type of attack that generates mainstream media attention; it’s one of the countless malware campaigns that are active at any given time. Its goal is a very common one in cybercriminal circles — to install a coin miner that silently steals computer resources and generates revenue for the attackers,” the report says.
This is, in many ways, similar to all those that have been discovered in recent times and works in the same vein as the steal CPU processing power from the computer to mine cryptocurrency in the background without the knowledge of the user. Many are so detailed and well constructed that they are automatically triggered when the user makes use of their normal computer processes and many can go undetected for months. Naturally, they have become a tool of choice for crypto-jackers as it is very financially lucrative.
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