Security News > 2023 > June > Google puts $1M behind its promise to detect cryptomining malware

Once they've broken into a victims' compute environment - often via compromised credentials - they keep quiet, deploying mining malware and then raking in cryptocurrencies using the stolen compute resources.

Plus, according to security researchers, illicit mining is on the rise.

The chocolate factory is confident that it can promptly detect and stop these attacks, and to that end it is adding cryptoming protection with up to $1 million to cover unauthorized Google Cloud compute expenses associated with undetected cryptomining attacks for its Security Command Center Premium customers.

Security Command Center is Google Cloud's built-in security and security and risk-management platform, and the new service scans virtual machine memory for mining malware.

Earlier this year, security researchers uncovered a sneaky mining botnet dubbed HeadCrab that uses bespoke malware to mine for Monero crytocurrency and infected at least 1,200 Redis servers in the last 18 months.

The compromised servers span the US, UK, German, India, Malaysia, China and other countries, according to Aqua Security's Nautilus researchers, who discovered the HeadCrab malware and have now found a way to detect it.

News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/06/08/google_1m_cryptominer_guarantee/