New Crypto-Mining Malware Targeting Asian Firms With NSA Tools

A new form of malware is targeting enterprises in Asia to mine monero cryptocurrency.

Cybersecurity software provider Symantec published the news in a blog post Wednesday, saying that over 80 percent of victims are located in China, with nations such as South Korea, Japan and Vietnam also seeing activity.

Dubbed "Beapy," the malicious code is a file-based crypto miner, not a browser-based one, the firm said.

Once DoublePulsar is installed on to a victim's machine, the miner is downloaded.

Cryptojacking malware can have a major impact on enterprises, Symantec said, including slowing down device performance, reducing employee productivity and increasing costs.

Although cryptojacking activity has decreased by about 52 percent over the last year, it is still an area of interest among hackers which largely target businesses.

"Looking at the overall figures for cryptojacking, we can see that there were just under 3 million cryptojacking attempts in March 2019. While a big drop from the peak of February 2018, when there were 8 million cryptojacking attempts, it is still a significant figure."

The firm said it first noticed Beapy in January of this year, but activity has increased since early March.

Monero's privacy features make it by far the most popular cryptocurrency among hackers deploying mining malware.

A form of malware that takes administrative control to first uninstall cloud security products and then injects code to mine monero.