Malicious Cryptominer Masquerading as Kubernetes pause Container

ATT&CK techniques

Defense Evasion → Impact

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
Priv Esc
Defense Evasion
- T1036.005Match Legitimate Resource Name or Location
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact
- T1496Resource Hijacking

What it detects

This rule detects execution of a binary named pause from the /var/tmp directory. Wiz Research observed the DERO cryptojacking campaign disguising its miner as the legitimate Kubernetes pause container while writing it to /var/tmp, so this wrong path plus trusted name combination indicates masquerading and resource hijacking.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1036.005 — drag to rearrange

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Malicious Cryptominer Masquerading as Kubernetes pause Container

Pivot detection · T1036.005 · 9 related

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

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