Security News > 2022 > February > Google Cloud hypervisor modified to detect cryptominers without agents

Google has announced the public preview of a new Virtual Machine Threat Detection system that can detect cryptocurrency miners and other malware without the need for software agents.

A significant problem for developers and enterprises using cloud-based virtual machines is the constant targeting of threat actors who breach servers to install cryptominers.

To detect threats running on virtual machines, cloud providers commonly install software agents that run within the server acting as security software.

These agents can cause a performance hit, and once a server is breached, threat actors can turn these agents off before deploying their malware.

Google Cloud's engineers decided to follow a unique approach that doesn't involve agents or excessive signal and telemetry data collection to detect coin miners.

"Traditional endpoint security relies on deploying software agents inside a guest virtual machine to gather signals and telemetry to inform runtime threat detection," explains Google in the announcement of this new feature.

News URL

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/google-cloud-hypervisor-modified-to-detect-cryptominers-without-agents/