Bitcoin mining | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

An ongoing malware campaign has been found exploiting recently disclosed vulnerabilities in network-attached storage (NAS) devices running on Linux systems to co-opt the machines into an  IRC botnet  for launching distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks and mining Monero cryptocurrency. The attacks deploy a new  malware variant called " FreakOut " by leveraging critical flaws fixed in Laminas Project (formerly Zend Framework) and Liferay Portal as well as an unpatched security weakness in TerraMaster, according to Check Point Research's new analysis published today and shared with The Hacker News. Attributing the malware to be the work of a long-time cybercrime hacker — who goes by the aliases Fl0urite and Freak on HackForums and Pastebin at least since 2015 — the researchers said the flaws —  CVE-2020-28188 ,  CVE-2021-3007 , and  CVE-2020-7961  — were weaponized to inject and execute malicious commands in the server. Regardless of the vul...

Windows and Linux users need to beware, as an all-in-one, destructive malware strain has been discovered in the wild that features multiple malware capabilities including ransomware, cryptocurrency miner, botnet, and self-propagating worm targeting Linux and Windows systems. Dubbed XBash, the new malware, believed to be tied to the Iron Group, a.k.a. Rocke—the Chinese speaking APT threat actors group known for previous cyber attacks involving ransomware and cryptocurrency miners . According to the researchers from security vendor Palo Alto Networks, who uncovered the malware, XBash is an all-in-one malware that features ransomware and cryptocurrency mining capabilities, as well as worm-like ability similar to WannaCry or Petya/ NotPetya . In addition to self-propagating capabilities, XBash also contains a functionality, which is not yet implemented, that could allow the malware to spread quickly within an organization's network. Developed in Python, XBash hunts for vul...

Vulnerability Management (VM) has long been a cornerstone of organizational cybersecurity. Nearly as old as the discipline of cybersecurity itself, it aims to help organizations identify and address potential security issues before they become serious problems. Yet, in recent years, the limitations of this approach have become increasingly evident.  At its core, Vulnerability Management processes remain essential for identifying and addressing weaknesses. But as time marches on and attack avenues evolve, this approach is beginning to show its age. In a recent report, How to Grow Vulnerability Management into Exposure Management (Gartner, How to Grow Vulnerability Management Into Exposure Management, 8 November 2024, Mitchell Schneider Et Al.), we believe Gartner® addresses this point precisely and demonstrates how organizations can – and must – shift from a vulnerability-centric strategy to a broader Exposure Management (EM) framework. We feel it's more than a worthwhile read an...

Remember the " Big bitcoin heist " we reported last month when a group of thieves stole around 600 powerful bitcoin mining devices from Icelandic data centers? Icelandic Police had arrested 11 suspects as part of the investigation, one of which has escaped from prison and fled to Sweden on a passenger plane reportedly also carrying the Icelandic prime minister Katrin Jakobsdottir. Sindri Thor Stefansson , who is suspected of masterminding the whole theft of almost $2 million worth of cryptocurrency-mining equipment, traveled under a passport of someone else but identified through surveillance footage. Stefansson had recently been transferred to a low-security Sogn prison, located in rural southern Iceland (just 59 miles away from Iceland's international airport in Keflavik), from where he escaped through a window early Tuesday and boarded the flight to Sweden. Prime minister Jakobsdottir was on her way to Sweden to take part in India-Nordic Summit and meet Indi...

Bitcoin is breaking every record—after gaining 20% jump last week, Bitcoin price just crossed the $14,800 mark in less than 24 hours—and there can be no better reason for hackers to put all of their efforts to steal skyrocketing cryptocurrency. NiceHash, the largest Bitcoin mining marketplace, has been hacked, which resulted in the theft of more than 4,700 Bitcoins worth over $57 million (at the time of breach). And guess what? You'll be surprised to know that the stolen BTC now worth over $70 million—in less than 24 hours. Founded in 2014, NiceHash is a cloud-based crypto-mining marketplace that connects people from all over the world to rent out their spare computing power to other in order to create new coins. On Wednesday, several NiceHash users reported that their BTC wallets had been emptied, which was later confirmed by NiceHash after its service went offline claiming to be undergoing maintenance. At the time of writing, the NiceHash service is still offline wi...

Some websites have found using a simple yet effective technique to keep their cryptocurrency mining javascript secretly running in the background even when you close your web browser. Due to the recent surge in cryptocurrency prices, hackers and even legitimate website administrators are increasingly using JavaScript-based cryptocurrency miners to monetize by levying the CPU power of their visitor's PC to mine Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies. After the world's most popular torrent download website, The Pirate Bay , caught secretly  using Coinhive , a browser-based cryptocurrency miner service, on its site last month, thousands of other websites also started using the service as an alternative monetization model to banner ads. However, websites using such crypto-miner services can mine cryptocurrencies as long as you're on their site. Once you close the browser window, they lost access to your processor and associated resources, which eventually stops mining. Un...

As of today — 1 Bitcoin = $7300 USD (Approx 471,000 INR) At the beginning of this year, 1 Bitcoin was approximately equal to $1000, and now it has surged to a new height, marking its market capitalization at over $124 billion. Is it really too late to invest in Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies like Ethereum? For those wondering if they have missed the money-making boat, the answer is—NO, it's never too late to invest. In case you are new to cryptocurrency trading, we have a simple step-by-step guide on our deal store that explains how to invest in cryptocurrencies . However, the blockchain, the revolutionary technology behind Bitcoin and other digital currencies, is not always about cryptocurrencies. Though it is a decentralized public database which ensures that all transactions are properly conducted and recorded, Blockchains can be used for a wide variety of applications, such as for digital identity management, smart assets, digital voting, distributed cloud sto...

The world's popular torrent download website, The Pirate Bay , has again been in a new controversy—this time over secretly planting an in-browser cryptocurrency miner on its website that utilizes its visitors' CPU processing power in order to mine digital currencies. The Pirate Bay is the most popular and most visited file-sharing website predominantly used to share copyrighted material free of charge. The site has usually been in the news for copyright infringement by movie studios, music producers and software creators. The Pirate Bay has recently been caught generating revenue by secretly utilizing CPU power of its millions of visitors to mine a Bitcoin alternative called Monero without their knowledge. The modern Internet depends on advertising revenue to survive, which apparently sometimes spoils users' experience. But The Pirate Bay is trying to choose a different approach. Visitors to the Pirate Bay recently discovered a JavaScript-based cryptocurrency mine...

A winning anonymous bidder bought 2,700 Bitcoins ( worth roughly $1.6 Million ) in an auction held by the United States Marshals Service ( USMS ) on Monday. The US government announced at the beginning of this month its plans to auction 2,719 Bitcoins that were seized during several criminal, civil and administrative cases like Silk Road. The US Marshals confirmed to CoinDesk that four bids were received in the auction that took place between 13:00 and 19:00 UTC on August 22. The majority of the Bitcoins in the auction were stemmed from investigations of the Silk Road online black marketplace. Included 2,719 Bitcoins in the auction were: Around 1,300 Bitcoins seized from a civil case related to Matthew Gillum, a Silk Road drug dealer, who was sentenced to nine years in prison in 2015. Only 2.8 Bitcoins directly came from Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht , who was found guilty of operating Silk Road for illegal goods and handed two life sentences . Some 65 Bitcoins came ...

Another day, another bad news for Bitcoin users. A leading Bitcoin information site is warning users that an upcoming version of the Blockchain consolidation software and Bitcoin wallets could most likely be targeted by "state-sponsored attackers." Recently, one of the world's most popular cryptocurrency exchanges, Bitfinex, suffered a major hack that resulted in a loss of around $72 Million worth of Bitcoins . Now, Bitcoin.org, the website that hosts downloads for Bitcoin Core, posted a message on its website on Wednesday warning users that the next version of the Bitcoin Core wallet, one of the most popular bitcoin wallets used to store bitcoins, might be replaced with a malicious version of the software offered by government-backed hackers. Specifically, Chinese bitcoin users and services are encouraged to be vigilant " due to the origin of the attackers. " Bitcoin.org doesn't believe it has sufficient resources to defend against the attack. ...

It's 2016, and now, you can earn some dollars by contributing into well-organized DDoS attack scheme. Do you know while mining Bitcoins you are actually contributing a significant computational power to keep the Bitcoin network running? In Bitcoins, the miners actually build and maintain massive public ledger containing a record of every Bitcoin transaction in history. When one user tries to send Bitcoins to another user, the miners validate the transfer by checking the ledger to make sure the sender is not transferring money he/she does not have, adding the transaction to the ledger and then finally sealing it behind layers and layers of computational work to protect that ledger from getting compromised or hacked. So for this, miners are rewarded with Bitcoins. So, basically, you are contributing the massive amount of computing power that keeps the Bitcoin transactions running and makes you earn some cryptocurrency in return as an incentive. However, Bitcoin has long be...

Yesterday, BBC broke a story allegedly revealing Craig Wright as the original creator of Bitcoin digital currency Satoshi Nakamoto. However, the highly skeptical cryptographic community is definitely not yet convinced with the technical proofs Wright has yet provided to the media outlets and on his  blog . Now, Wright has promised to provide further evidence for his claim that he is behind the pseudonym, Satoshi Nakamoto. Wright's spokesman told BBC that he would " move a coin from an early block " of Bitcoin owned by Nakamoto " in the coming days. " However, the spokesman did not specify a deadline. " So, over the coming days, I will be posting a series of pieces that will lay the foundations for this extraordinary claim, which will include posting independently-verifiable documents and evidence addressing some of the false allegations that have been levelled, and transferring bitcoin from an early block. ", Wright said in a latest blog post...

The mysterious creator of the BITCOIN digital cryptocurrency seems to have been identified as an Australian entrepreneur, and his name is: Craig Steven Wright. Five months after Wright, an Australian computer scientist and businessman was outed as Satoshi Nakamoto , revealed himself as the original inventor of Bitcoin digital currency. Wright has published a blog post offering Cryptographic Key as proof of his work, backed up by other technical information and the prominent Bitcoin community members have also corroborated his claim. However, Satoshi Nakamoto has always shown the desire to remain anonymous, while Wright has not. " I am not seeking publicity, but want to set the record straight, " he explains. Wright has provided some technical proofs to BBC , The Economist, and GQ media outlets that link him to the identity of Nakamoto. Craig Wright Claims He is Satoshi Nakamoto At the meeting with the BBC and Economist, he digitally signed messages using th...

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 ...

Bitcoins are making their way, in Bits and Pieces. In a recent report The Hacker News (THN) had mentioned about banks adopting the Blockchain Technology from Bitcoins ; to create a safe and secure distributed ledger. Now, last week U.S. Commodity Future Trading Commission (CFTC) , has added Bitcoins and other virtual currencies to the commodities basket which previously includes Gold, Crude Oil, foreign exchange, and Stocks. CFTC is an oversight committee of the USA, established to protect the interest of the people who have invested in any of the commodities by ensuring the conduct of no malpractices. The commodity swaps are working according to the Commodity Exchange Act (CEA). BITCOIN - Commodity for the Conduct of Trade Implying which now the Bitcoins and other virtual currencies, considered as cryptocurrency earlier, are now known as commodities for the conduct of trade. Moreover, after being tagged as a commodity and making its entry into CEA by...

One of the biggest, reliable and most trusted Bitcoin exchange — Bitstamp — on Monday announced that it has been a target of a hacking attack, which lead to the theft of " less than 19,000 BTC" (worth about $5 million in virtual currency; one BTC is about $270). Bitstamp issued a statement on its official website in which the company warned its users not to deposit any Bitcoin to previously issued addresses, so as to prevent further losses. While the investigation is going on, the company has frozen its user accounts, blocked deposits as well as other transactions and suspended the trading business. After the Slovenian-based Bitcoin exchange suspected the security breach over the weekend that compromised one of Bitstamp's operational and active bitcoin storage wallets, the exchange suspended its service for the time being. The company reassured its users that the security breach only affected its " operational wallet ," i.e. only " a small fr...

Till now, he have heard about " Bitcoin digital wallet hacked " or " Bitcoin website hacked ", but now a hacker has stolen cryptocurrency from mining pools and generated $83,000 in digital cash in more than four months by gaining access to a Canadian Internet provider. Bitcoin is a virtual currency that makes use of cryptography to create and transfer bitcoins. Users make use of digital wallets to store bitcoin addresses from which bitcoins are received or sent. Bitcoin uses public-key cryptography so that each address is associated with a pair of mathematically linked public and private keys that are held in the wallet. Researchers at Dell SecureWorks Counter Threat Unit (CTU) , a cyber intelligence company, have discovered a series of malicious activities in which a cryptocurrency thief used bogus Border Gateway Protocol ( BGP ) broadcasts to hijack networks belonging to no less than 19 Internet service providers, including Amazon and other hosting services like DigitalO...