Malicious Cryptocurrency Miner Execution (via process_creation)

PremiumReviewedSigma · High · v1
Product
linux
Category
process_creation
Author
HuntRule
Published
2026-09-04
Updated
2026-09-04

ATT&CK techniques

Impact
  1. Recon

  2. Resource Dev

  3. Initial Access

  4. Execution

  5. Persistence

  6. Priv Esc

  7. Defense Evasion

  8. Cred Access

  9. Discovery

  10. Lateral Movement

  11. Collection

  12. C2

  13. Exfiltration

What it detects

This rule detects command lines carrying cryptomining indicators such as stratum pool URLs, --donate-level or known miner names, a resource-hijacking impact technique that runs coin miners on compromised Linux hosts. Cryptomining is tracked in the Red Canary Threat Detection Report. Detecting these arguments surfaces unauthorized use of compute resources.

Related detections9 linkedT1496 — drag to rearrange
Malicious WinRing0 Vulnerable Driver Load for Coin Mining
Suspicious Power Configuration Change to Prevent Sleep via powercfg
Suspicious kswapd0 Masquerading Miner Process
Suspicious XMRig Cryptominer Execution with Pool URL by StaryDobry
Suspicious SteelFox Service Binary Launched by services.exe
Suspicious Cryptomining Shell Script Execution sex.sh or miner.sh on Linux (via process_creation)
Malicious XMRig Cryptominer Execution via Custom Command-Line Flags (via process_creation)
Malicious XMRig GhostRider Coinminer Execution with Mining Pool Arguments
Suspicious Sleep and Hibernate Disabled via Powercfg for Mining (via process_creation)
Malicious Cryptocurrency Miner Execution (via process_creation)
Pivot detection · T1496 · 9 related

Detection content is published as a reviewed draft. Tune thresholds and exclusions against your own telemetry before enabling this rule for alerting.