Security News > 2020 > January > Vivin Nets Thousands of Dollars Using Cryptomining Malware

A recently uncovered threat actor, dubbed Vivin, has made thousands of U.S. dollars through a large-scale cryptomining campaign.

Vivin is unique due to its longevity - the threat actor has been active since at least 2017 - and researchers with Cisco Talos point to Vivin as a good example of why cryptomining malware isn't going anywhere, despite a loss in the value of Monero over the past few years.

LO: So I wanted to talk a little bit about some research that was released yesterday, that touched on a threat actor that you guys are tracking called "Vivin." And according to research, this threat actor has been active since at least November 2017, and is responsible for cryptomining campaigns and basically mining thousands of U.S. dollars and Monero cryptocurrency off of infected hosts.

So can you walk us through kind of the technical details in terms of the cryptomining campaigns that were being launched by this threat actor? I mean, we talked a little bit about the initial infection vector using that, you know, pirated software, what would happen once that was complete, what's kind of the next steps there?

I think at that time, a lot of people believe that would kind of dissuade cyber criminals from using cryptomining as a popular attack method, but I know in the research that you argue that cryptomining remains strong as an attack vector throughout 2019 heading into 2020.

News URL

https://threatpost.com/vivin-nets-thousands-cryptomining-malware/152110/