We have seen various malware reports in recent times and one of the most recent ones was that of a hacker using bank systems to mine cryptocurrency. Now, we have the report of a new malware which uses Bitcoin blockchain to target its victims.
Basically, Bitcoin blockchains are a ledger or a record of whose Bitcoin it is. Therefore, the malware could get the identity of the owners and then target them for hacking purposes.
Cybersecurity firm TrendMicro has found out that new malware is making use of scanning Bitcoin transactions. It will look for secret instructions that would allow attackers to remotely access computers of the victims.
This malware named as Glupteba was first discovered by WeLiveSecurity in 2011. This malware can be used to hijack someone’s computer in order to steal information or be used to carry out denial of service attacks.
Basically, DOS or Denial of service attack is where too many systems are bombarded on to a website or system so that the network gets disrupted. This is often used when attackers don’t want to let you use the service that is harmful to them.
This bug becomes much more dangerous because it is hidden behind advertisements. Therefore, users simply click on those ads and that malware gets installed on their systems. This practice called malvertising is also used to hack into people’s systems.
TrendMicro reveals that the attacker makes a Bitcoin transaction with encoded data hidden within one of its functions. The address of a new server is inside the encoded message which gives the malware a new virus location.
Once the malware scans for Bitcoin blockchain and identifies the transaction, it then decoded the hidden message and gets into the system. Since Bitcoin blockchain is encrypted, it is often used before as well to share hidden illegal information.