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It is not good to pirate the popular novelties of the film distribution. But now it has become even more dangerous. The network began to spread malware for hidden cryptocurrency mining, disguised as torrent files of popular movies.
Cybersecurity firm ReasonLabs found that the Spider-Man: No Way Home torrent file turned out to be malware for mining the privacy-focused cryptocurrency Monero.
We identified a Monero miner attached to a torrent download of ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home.’
Read all about it in ZDNet 👇🏼 #cryptojacking #malware #ReasonLabshttps://t.co/2eRUy0zVdp
— ReasonLabs (@Reasonsecurity) December 23, 2021
The malicious file is called “spiderman_net_putidomoi.torrent.exe” and, judging by the name, is targeted at users from Russia and was created on a Russian-language platform. A mining program can go unnoticed for a long time by setting exclusions for scanning by Microsoft Defender antivirus.
Although the malware does not steal personal information, ReasonLabs notes that it harms the victim in the form of increased electricity bills and high CPU usage, which slows down computers. The company recommends “be extra careful when downloading content of any kind from unofficial sources – be it a document in an email from an unknown sender, a hacked program from a questionable download portal, or a file to be downloaded via a torrent client.”
Cryptojacking – the launch of malware that performs mining on devices without the user’s consent, is becoming more and more popular from year to year. In the first half of 2021, cybersecurity firm Trend Micro found nearly 75,000 malware injections.
Sophos, another research firm, reported that crypto mining malware is infecting company networks. And Monero (XMR) is the most popular cryptocurrency among attackers injecting malware.
#torrent #file #download #Monero #cryptocurrency #miner
