Malicious Cryptocurrency Miner Masquerading as kswapd0

ATT&CK techniques

Impact

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
Priv Esc
Defense Evasion
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact
- T1496Resource Hijacking

What it detects

This rule detects a userland process named kswapd0 executing from disk, a masquerade used by the Outlaw Linux malware to hide XMRig cryptocurrency mining under the name of a legitimate Linux kernel thread. Because kswapd0 is a kernel thread that never appears as an on-disk executable, such a process strongly indicates cryptojacking for resource hijacking.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1496 — drag to rearrange

Malicious XMRig Cryptomining Pool DNS Query to c3pool via Ivanti Compromise

Suspicious Competing Cryptominer Termination via killall

Malicious XMRig Miner Installation via c3pool Setup Script

Suspicious Hosts File Modification Pointing to Mining Pool via Command Line (via process_creation)

Suspicious Fake vSphere Service Installation with SELinux Disable via Command Line (via process_creation)

Suspicious MSR Kernel Module Loading for Cryptomining Optimization via Command Line (via process_creation)

Malicious CreativeUpdate Cryptominer Execution via mdworker Path (via process_creation)

Malicious Cryptominer Execution via AddInProcess with XMRig Arguments (via process_creation)

Malicious Cryptocurrency Miner Execution via XMRig and c3pool (via process_creation)

Malicious Cryptocurrency Miner Masquerading as kswapd0

Pivot detection · T1496 · 9 related

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