Security News > 2020 > October > InterPlanetary Storm Botnet Infects 13K Mac, Android Devices
A new variant of the InterPlanetary Storm malware has been discovered, which comes with fresh detection-evasion tactics and now targets Mac and Android devices.
Researchers say, the malware is building a botnet with a current estimated 13,500 infected machines across 84 countries worldwide - and that number continues to grow.
"While the botnet that this malware is building does not have clear functionality yet, it gives the campaign operators a backdoor into the infected devices so they can later be used for cryptomining, DDoS, or other large-scale attacks," said researchers with Barracuda in a Thursday analysis.
"The malware is called InterPlanetary Storm because it uses the InterPlanetary File System p2p network and its underlying libp2p implementation," said researchers.
The newest variant of the malware has various big changes, most notably extending its targeting to include Mac and Android devices.