Cryptojacking cases have been on the rise over recent years. During the RSA conference in 2019, Cisco Umbrella, a renowned cybersecurity firm, revealed that cryptojacking cases had increased 200-fold during the year.
One infamous group, Lazarus Group, has managed to make away with over $517 million worth of cryptocurrencies over the years. The group, which originated from North Korea with several hackers operating in different countries under them, is known for targeting and hacking cryptocurrency.
Lazarus’ Cryptojacking Activities Involve LinkedIn Use
United Nations (UN) Security Council experts confirmed that the Lazarus was responsible for heists that cost the crypto market losses of $571 million between 2017 and 2018.
The Lazarus Group has been noted to use LinkedIn lures to target the crypto traders in the United States, the United Kingdom, Singapore, Germany, India, and other countries.
F-Secure, a cybersecurity provider firm, finally linked the malicious group to recent cryptojacking attacks. The firm’s report states that these hackers used a malicious crafted Word document disguised as a General Data Protection Regulation protected file. The file required the victim to activate content so that the hackers gained access to the rest of the information, after which the document executed a macro code that connected to a bit.ly link.
New Hope for Cryptocurrency Security
Computer Scientists have developed an artificial intelligence(AI) that can detect malicious activities caused by crypto hackers. This system identifies malicious codes that hijack supercomputers to steal cryptocurrencies like bitcoin.
Gopinath Chennupati from Los Alamos National Laboratory said that this monitoring tool will be crucial. The technology will help prevent hackers from gaining access to mining facilities and stealing precious computing resources.
This system works by comparing programs based on graphs, which act as fingerprints for the software. It compares different graphs from a program’s flow-control graph to those that run on a computer. The system does not find a match to a known criminal program, but instead, checks to determine whether the graph is among those that are supposed to be running on the system.
How Effective is the Artificial Intelligence (AI) System?
Researchers compared a known benign code to a malicious bitcoin code. They found that the system identified the malicious code quicker than non-AI analyses.
The approach relies on graph comparison, and hence hackers cannot use it to their advantage and disguise their codes.
The AI system will come in handy to help curb increasing cryptojacking cases. Therefore, it will be easier to track and stop criminal groups such as Lazarus to prevent future attacks.
