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Category — Bitcoin miners
Creator of Bitcoin Mining Schemes faces $12 Million for Ponzi Scam

Creator of Bitcoin Mining Schemes faces $12 Million for Ponzi Scam

Jun 06, 2017
Every time a new topic trends on the Internet, scammers take advantage of it. You must have heard of Bitcoin and how in recent days it has made some early investors millionaire overnight. Yes, the Bitcoin boom is back, and it's real — a digital currency that has just crossed a new milestone today. The current price of 1 BTC or 1 Bitcoin = US$2,850. An American con man took advantage of this boom in Bitcoin market to run bogus bitcoin mining schemes and earn millions of dollars. But the bogus schemes ended as the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has won a legal battle against two bogus, but now defunct, Bitcoin companies operated by Homero Joshua Garza — GAW Miners and ZenMiner. Garza is now facing a $12 Million (£9.2 Million) penalty for running the bogus schemes – what lawmakers have certified was a "Ponzi scheme." According to the SEC, Garza used the "lure of quick riches" in order to get people to invest in the bitcoin mi...
Malicious Cryptocurrency Mining tool turns Computers into Zcash Mining Machines

Malicious Cryptocurrency Mining tool turns Computers into Zcash Mining Machines

Dec 13, 2016
Since its launch over a month ago, new virtual currency Zcash (ZEC) has become a significant way for cybercrooks to make money by infecting computers with software mining program. Launched in late October, Zcash (ZEC) is a new cryptocurrency currency that claims to be more anonymous than Bitcoin, as the sender, recipient and value of transactions can be hidden. With this premise, Zcash attracted significant interest from academics, investors, miners, and cyber criminals. Within the first few hours of its launch, 1 ZEC reached $30,000, a relatively high value any cryptocurrency ever had. At the time of writing, 1 ZEC is worth 0.06 BTC or around $49. However, according to a blog post published on Monday by Kaspersky Lab, cyber criminals have already started deploying malware that installs on and infects the computers of unsuspecting users and then uses their resources to mine Zcash for the hacker's profit. You Might have Zcash Mining Malware on Your PC! The actual s...
Cyber Story Time: The Boy Who Cried "Secure!"

Cyber Story Time: The Boy Who Cried "Secure!"

Nov 21, 2024Threat Detection / Pentesting
As a relatively new security category, many security operators and executives I've met have asked us "What are these Automated Security Validation (ASV) tools?" We've covered that pretty extensively in the past, so today, instead of covering the " What is ASV?" I wanted to address the " Why ASV?" question. In this article, we'll cover some common use cases and misconceptions of how people misuse and misunderstand ASV tools daily (because that's a lot more fun). To kick things off, there's no place to start like the beginning. Automated security validation tools are designed to provide continuous, real-time assessment of an organization's cybersecurity defenses. These tools are continuous and use exploitation to validate defenses like EDR, NDR, and WAFs. They're more in-depth than vulnerability scanners because they use tactics and techniques that you'll see in manual penetration tests. Vulnerability scanners won't relay hashes or combine vulnerabilities to further attacks, whic
Wanna Mine Bitcoins Faster? Researchers Find New Way to Do it

Wanna Mine Bitcoins Faster? Researchers Find New Way to Do it

Feb 15, 2016
A new machine for Bitcoin Mining called " Approximate Hardware " would make Bitcoin mining easier. Bitcoin had gained tremendous popularity over a few couple of years among the virtual currencies due to its decentralized principle. Mining a single Bitcoin is not an ice cake walk, as it requires an enormous amount of computing power to dig Bitcoins. To overcome this issue and mine Bitcoins faster, security researchers has conducted a study and made a new loophole in the mining process in an effort to mine the Bitcoins easily. How to Mine Bitcoins Faster? A team of Illinois-based researchers led by Indian Scientist, Rakesh Kumar, has designed a new hardware named " Approximate " that could reduce the pain of Bitcoin mining by 30 percent. The proposed system would make use of the faults in the hardware system such as: False Positives where an error is not present but notifies a fake error. False Negatives where an error is present but ...
cyber security

Creating, Managing and Securing Non-Human Identities

websitePermisoCybersecurity / Identity Security
A new class of identities has emerged alongside traditional human users: non-human identities (NHIs). Permiso Security's new eBook details everything you need to know about managing and securing non-human identities, and strategies to unify identity security without compromising agility.
Meet The World's First Person Who Hacked His Body to Implant a Bitcoin Payment CHIP

Meet The World's First Person Who Hacked His Body to Implant a Bitcoin Payment CHIP

Nov 03, 2015
Hackers are now going crazy and trying new ways in Biohacking . Until now, we have seen a hacker who implanted a small NFC chip in his hand in order to hack Android smartphones and bypass almost all security measures. However, now the level of craziness has gone to a whole new level. A Swedish hacker has devised a neat trick that makes him able to buy groceries or transfer money between bank accounts by just waving his hand. Yes, you heard that right.  Patric Lanhed , a software developer at DigitasLBi, implanted a small NFC (Near Field Communications) chip with the private key to his Bitcoin wallet under his skin. So How Does the Trick Work? So, while sending Bitcoin payment from one digital wallet to another, he just has to wave his hands against an NFC chip reader that will scan the data, and a custom software will confirm the authenticity of the key, triggering the money transfer. A proof-of-concept video demonstration by Patric and his acquain...
Android Bitcoin-Mining Malware found on Google Play Store

Android Bitcoin-Mining Malware found on Google Play Store

Apr 25, 2014
Google always bound to face trouble over the wide and open nature of its app checking policies on Google Play Store, and despite so many security measures, the search engine giant mostly fails to recognize the Android malware that are lurking around its Google Play store in vast numbers. Recently, Google had offered users refund and additional credit of $5 for the bogus antivirus app ' Virus Sheild ' that potentially defrauded more than 10,000 Android users who have downloaded the app from the Google play store. The step taken by Google is really appreciated, as the refunding cost Google around $269,000. Now, it has been found that a number of malicious Android apps on the Google Play store secretly turn users' android devices into small rigs contributing to a large-scale crypto currency mining operation. CRYPTO MINER IN ANDROID APP Security researchers from an anti-malware firm Lookout have identified various malware apps at Google Play Store, which they dub...
Linux Worm targets Internet-enabled Home appliances to Mine Cryptocurrencies

Linux Worm targets Internet-enabled Home appliances to Mine Cryptocurrencies

Mar 20, 2014
Could a perfectly innocent looking device like router, TV set-top box or security cameras can mine Bitcoins? YES! Hackers will not going to spare the Smart Internet-enabled devices. A Linux worm named Linux . Darlloz , earlier used to target Internet of Things (IoT) devices, i.e. Home Routers, Set-top boxes, Security Cameras, printers and Industrial control systems; now have been upgraded to mine Crypto Currencies like Bitcoin. Security Researcher at Antivirus firm Symantec spotted the Darlloz Linux worm back in November and they have spotted the latest variant of the worm in mid-January this year. Linux . Darlloz worm exploits a PHP vulnerability ( CVE-2012-1823 ) to propagate and is capable to infect devices those run Linux on Intel's x86 chip architecture and other embedded device architectures such as PPC, MIPS and MIPSEL. The latest variant of Linux . Darlloz equipped with an open source crypto currency mining tool called ' cpuminer ', could be us...
MtGox Hacker tricks people to install Bitcoin Stealer

MtGox Hacker tricks people to install Bitcoin Stealer

Mar 15, 2014
This News will blow everyone's mind! If you are a bitcoins holder then you might be aware of  MtGox , Once the World's biggest Bitcoin exchange .  MtGox  filed for bankruptcy last month after saying it lost some 8,50,000 Bitcoins to hackers and suddenly went dark with no explanations. A few days ago, some unknown hacker breached into the personal blog and Reddit account of MTgox CEO,  Mark Karpeles  to level charges of fraud. But, Hackers are very clever to avail every eventuality they get. After compromising the MtGox CEO's blog, the hacker posted a 716MB ZIP file, MtGox2014Leak.zip , which contains the data dump and specialized software tools for remote access to MtGox data, but these software tools turned out to be a Bitcoin wallet stealing malware , according to the research carried out by the Kaspersky Lab Expert , Sergey Lozhkin. The application was actually a malware, which was created to search and steal Bitcoin wallet files fr...
LINKUP - First Ransomware trojan that modifies DNS settings to mine Bitcoin forcefully

LINKUP - First Ransomware trojan that modifies DNS settings to mine Bitcoin forcefully

Feb 07, 2014
Till now we all have heard about the Ransomware malware that encrypts your files or lock down your computer and ask for a ransom amount to be paid in a specified duration of time to unlock it. Emsisoft has detected a new piece of malware called " Linkup ", dubbed as " Trojan-Ransom.Win32.Linkup " that doesn't lock your computer or encrypts files; rather it blocks your Internet access by modifying the DNS settings, with the ability to turn your computer into a Bitcoin mining robot.  Sounds Interesting?? Once the Linkup Trojan is installed in your system, it makes a copy of itself and disables the selected Windows Security and Firewall services to facilitate the infection. Injected poisoned DNS Server will only allow the malware and Bitcoin miner to communicate with the internet. It display a bogus notification on the victim's web browser, which is supposed to be from the Council of Europe , that accuses you of viewing " Child Pornography " and only returns th...
Cyber criminals targeting another cryptocurrency 'Primecoin' with malicious miners

Cyber criminals targeting another cryptocurrency 'Primecoin' with malicious miners

Jan 16, 2014
Like Bitcoin, There are numerous other cryptocurrency similar in nature, including  MasterCoin , ProtoShares, Litecoin, Peercoin, BitBar and many more. One of them is  Primecoin  (sign: Ψ; code: XPM),  a peer-to-peer open source cryptocurrency that implements a scientific computing proof-of-work system. Unlike Bitcoin or other virtual currencies, only Primecoin provides a proof of work that has intrinsic value. It generates a special form of prime number chains, known as ' Cunningham chains & bi-twin chains ' and has a real world importance in mathematical research. Worldwide famous RSA Encryption basically uses two prime numbers for generating a RSA key pair. If you are able to factorize the public key and find these prime numbers, you will then be able to find the private key. Thus, the whole Security of RSA encryption is based on the length of prime numbers. So, Primecoin plays a great role for crypto researchers to get large... and a ve...
Don't Install Crap ! Bitcoin Mining malware bundled with Potentially Unwanted Programs

Don't Install Crap ! Bitcoin Mining malware bundled with Potentially Unwanted Programs

Nov 30, 2013
The increasing public attention of Bitcoin did not go unnoticed by Cyber Criminals who have begun unleashing Bitcoin Mining malware. Security researchers at Malwarebytes warned about a new malware threat, in which Bitcoin Miners are bundled with third party potentially unwanted programs (PUPs) that come bundled with legitimate applications. Malware allow cybercriminals to utilize systems' computing resources for their own gain. " This type of system hijacking is just another way for advertising based software to exploit a user into getting even more cash. " The malware is found to be using ' jhProtominer ' a popular mining software that runs via the command line, to abuse the CPUs and GPUs of infected computers to generate Bitcoins. Upon further investigation Malwarebytes found that the parent of the Bitcoin miner was " monitor.exe ", a part of YourFreeProxy application, which " beacons out constantly, waiting for commands from a remote server, eventually downlo...
Malware that turns computers into Bitcoin miners

Malware that turns computers into Bitcoin miners

Apr 09, 2013
Researchers from Kaspersky Lab have discovered a new spam message campaign being transmitted via Skype contains malware capable of using an infected computer to mine for Bitcoins. The malware, identified as Trojan.Win32.Jorik.IRCbot.xkt . Bitcoin is a non-governmental, fully-digital currency based on an open-source and peer-to-peer internet protocol. Cybercriminals have figured out that distributed Bitcoin mining is a perfect task for botnets and have started developing malware that can abuse the CPUs and GPUs of infected computers to generate Bitcoins. " Bitcoin mining is the process of making computer hardware do mathematical calculations for the Bitcoin network to confirm transactions and increase security, " Victims are encouraged to install malware file that is included with messages like " this my favourite picture of you ". Those who click the links, infected with a virus dropper downloaded from a server in India. If the malicious file is ins...
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