Mining Defense Validation
Mining software has emerged as one of the attacks with the most significant impact on cybersecurity and business information security.
Impact of Mining Software
Severe performance degradation and hardware resource wastage
The mining software forces the host to perform high-performance calculations for extended periods, consuming significant CPU, memory, and network bandwidth. This leads to severe hardware wastage, causing a sharp decline in machine performance and impacting the normal operation of business applications. In extreme cases, it can result in system interruptions or crashes.
Significant energy consumption and carbon emissions
Bitcoin mining alone consumes approximately 91 terawatt hours (trillions of watt hours) of electricity annually, equivalent to approximately 0.5% of global electricity consumption. This exceeds the electricity consumption of Finland, with a population of 5.5 million, and is more than seven times that of Google’s global business.
Stealing critical information and causing asset losses
Attackers install backdoors or remote control software on hosts through mining programs, enabling long-term control of hosts to steal confidential documents and key information, and introduce malicious programs, resulting in leakage of organizational information and asset loss.
Controlling hosts as "zombie host" and implementing diffusion and springboard attacks
Mining software is implanted in victimized hosts, allowing attackers to control them as “zombie hosts” to attack other targets on the internet. They can also use the controlled hosts as springboards to infiltrate intranets or download servers for distributing Trojans, thus launching more serious cyber-attacks such as DDoS.
The Attack Chain of Mining Software
The attack chain of mining software closely resembles regular attacks, comprising similar stages and techniques as outlined below. Therefore, if you can detect and block the attack at any stage, you can mitigate its impact.
Trends of Mining Software
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Malware Category Distribution in Cloud Environments
According to the "2021 IBM Security X-Force Cloud Threat Landscape Report," it is highlighted that malicious mining Trojans have emerged as a significant concern within cloud hosting malware.
What Support You Can Receive from Cybersecurity Validation
Based on the stages of the attack chain of mining software, organizations should prioritize detecting pre-mining software attacks in their early stages to prevent them from establishing persistence and executing mining operations. Early detection of intrusions enables organizations to accelerate their response, mitigate their impact to a manageable level, and conserve energy resources.
We can rapidly simulate these Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTPs) at scale before the actual deployment of mining software, ensuring that your security controls can effectively respond to these attacks.
Summary and Automation
Deploying continuous validation
Summary
06
Revalidating
Revalidating
Comparing the results data
05
Remediation
Identifying the gaps
Fixing misconfigurations
Remedying failures
Budgeting
04
Planning
Scenario discussion
Signing Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs), authorizing, and defining the division of labor
01
Execution
Deploying platforms and validators
Executing validation
Quality control
02
Analysis & Optimization
Analyzing testing results
Determining remediation details
03
Validate Your Mining Prevention and Detection
A professional mining defense validation solution is provided, generating a comprehensive and ready-to-improve reference assessment report. This report identifies specific risks for organizations, offers attack details, and provides mitigation recommendations.
