Security News > 2023 > November > Researchers Uncover Undetectable Crypto Mining Technique on Azure Automation

Cybersecurity researchers have developed what's the first fully undetectable cloud-based cryptocurrency miner leveraging the Microsoft Azure Automation service without racking up any charges.

Developed by Microsoft, it's a cloud-based automation service that allows users to automate the creation, deployment, monitoring, and maintenance of resources in Azure.

"We could create a malicious package named 'pip' and upload it to the Automation Account," Gamrian explained.

"The upload flow would replace the current pip in the Automation account. After our custom pip was saved in the Automation account, the service used it every time a package was uploaded."

SafeBreach has also made available a proof-of-concept dubbed CoinMiner that's designed to get free computing power within Azure Automation service by using the Python package upload mechanism.

While the scope of the research is limited to the abuse of Azure Automation for cryptocurrency mining, the cybersecurity firm warned that the same techniques could be repurposed by threat actors to achieve any task that requires code execution on Azure.

News URL

https://thehackernews.com/2023/11/researchers-uncover-undetectable-crypto.html