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

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Suspicious Lucifer Botnet Mining Pool Domain Resolution (via dns_query)

Suspicious Proxyjacking Service Resolution Observed in perfctl Campaign (via dns_query)

Malicious PureMiner Persistence Executable in AppData HResult Folder

Suspicious T-Rex CoinMiner Binaries in Windows NT Program Files Folder (via file_event)

Malicious Cryptocurrency Miner Execution (via process_creation)

Possible Cryptomining Beacon to c3pool Mining Domain

Malicious XMRig Cryptominer Execution with NiceHash Pool Arguments

Malicious Cryptocurrency Miner Masquerading as kswapd0

Pivot detection · T1496 · 9 related

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