Cyber security: New Malware designed to target cryptocurrency
2 min readTL;DR Breakdown
- New malware has been designed to target crypto assets
- The malicious threat has been active for over a year now
A recent report by cyber security company, Intezer, has said that a new type of malware has been designed to target cryptocurrencies. This malware has been in operation for over a year now and it works across various operating systems like Windows, Linux, and macOS.
The malware, named ElectroRAT, is being promoted across various forums and through different marketing campaigns to unsuspecting crypto users. On one particular platform, it was described as a tool that is designed to be used for different exchanges transactions on one interface.
It can be found on popular crypto forums like Bitcointalk and SteemCoinPan.
Intezer said it only made the discovery around last year’s December, however, it has been in existence for more than a year. They also stated that ElectroRAT is also more sophisticated than most other malwares. The cyber security firm said that most of the other malwares targeted their victim’s wallet, this one was designed in such a way that it would target multiple operating systems at the same time.
Cyber security firm describes how the malware works
According to Intezer, the malicious actors had set up different user accounts on many platforms to post unreal stories to entice readers to browse through the applications’ web page. Victims then, unknowingly, download these malware from an external page.
To further convince their victims, the actors also set up Social media pages on Twitter and Telegram and also paid a crypto media influencer to give their malware some form of authenticity.
Once a user falls for all of this gimmick and installs this malware on his system, the malicious threat begins to send necessary personal information like accounts details and private keys of crypto wallets to the perpetrators who then can be able to carry out transactions through hot wallets.
