New Malware Allows Mining Bitcoin More Effectively on Infected Computers

08.05.2015

Unknown developers published a report on two new malware items capable of introducing dramatic amendments into Bitcoin mining on infected computers. As opposed to their counterparts, those malware programs are made in quite an exquisite way and remain almost invisible to a victim.

Both viruses, being Jellyfish (rootkit) and Demon (keylogger) can operate without launching processes in OS core, thus giving no suspicions to their victim.

The programs use GPU rather than CPU to launch on the infected computer which conceals their operation and enhances computing power. According to the experts, this could empower hidden mining of Bitcoin on infected computers.
Linux-based Jellyfish is a concept project employing LD_PRELOAD technique by Jynx, as well as OpenCL API by Khronos. The malware currently supports AMD and NVIDIA videocards. Keylogger Demon has not been described by the developers in details as yet. They just described it as proof-of-concept as provided in a work You may enter, but cannot conceal: invisible GPU-keylogger.

Ivan Meir, Moonlabs specialist for computer security, told ForkLog: This can really change malware market and start yet another wave of criminal interest towards cryptocurrency. I have never seen anything like that on malware market, yet I’m quite sure the supply has existed on private markets for at least six months.

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