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Yoshi Bitcoin Mining Botnet (June 29, 2012)

by Security News

The Dell Sonicwall UTM research team received reports of a continually growing Bitcoin miner Botnet. Bitcoin miner Trojans continue to be an evolving threat. They gather many infected machines together to form a botnet and use public mining pools to contribute to the generation of bitcoins. The bitcoins can be later converted into fiat currency. Malware of this nature has also been covered in a previous sonicalert.

The Trojan performs the following DNS queries:

      jus{removed}.tf
      dire{removed}.tv
      hot{removed}.com
      s320.hot{removed}.com
      eu.triplemining.com
      eu2.triplemining.com

The Trojan creates the following files on the filesystem:

  • %WINDIR%system32conhostd.exe
  • %WINDIR%system32svchost64.exe

The Trojan creates the following registry key in the Windows registry to enable startup after reboot:

  • HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionRun conhostd.exe "%WINDIR%system32conhostd.exe"

The Trojan makes the following request to determine how to download and run the mining module:

The Trojan downloads a commandline bitcoin miner from a public file hosting site:

The mining software contains the following commandline options:

The Trojan also downloads a bitcoin mining controller module . The module contains the following configuration data:

Upon successful setup the Trojan will invoke the bitcoin miner. The mining software uses most of the CPU resources of the compromised machine. The software is also capable of utilizing ATI GPU's as suggested in the configuration data and commandline options.

SonicWALL Gateway AntiVirus provides protection against this threat via the following signatures:

  • GAV: Miner.C (Trojan)
  • GAV: Miner.A_2 (Trojan)
  • GAV: Miner.YSH (Trojan)

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The SonicWall Capture Labs Threat Research Team gathers, analyzes and vets cross-vector threat information from the SonicWall Capture Threat network, consisting of global devices and resources, including more than 1 million security sensors in nearly 200 countries and territories. The research team identifies, analyzes, and mitigates critical vulnerabilities and malware daily through in-depth research, which drives protection for all SonicWall customers. In addition to safeguarding networks globally, the research team supports the larger threat intelligence community by releasing weekly deep technical analyses of the most critical threats to small businesses, providing critical knowledge that defenders need to protect their networks.