Malicious XMRig Cryptominer Execution with NiceHash Pool Arguments

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 launch of the XMRig cryptocurrency miner with its characteristic pool and NiceHash command-line flags. The BeatBanker dual-mode Android trojan runs XMRig against an attacker pool over TLS to abuse device resources for Monero mining as reported by Kaspersky. This flag combination is specific to covert mining and indicates resource hijacking on the host.

Reporting behind it

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 XMRig Cryptominer Execution with NiceHash Pool Arguments

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.

Full detection rule

Unlock this rule to view and copy it

The detection logic is included with a plan. Everything else — context, mappings and implementation details — stays free on this page.

Sign in for 3 free unlocks

Signing in gives you 3 unlocks to spend on any rule in the library. No card, and they do not expire.

Also included

Unlocked rules convert on this page — to Splunk SPL or Splunk — Raw Index SPL or Microsoft Sentinel KQL or Microsoft Sentinel ASIM ASIM KQL or Microsoft Defender XDR KQL or Elastic Security KQL or Elastic Security Lucene or Elastic Security ES|QL or CrowdStrike Falcon CQL or SentinelOne PowerQuery or Palo Alto Cortex XDR XQL or Carbon Black Cloud Platform Search or Carbon Black EDR Process Search or Google Security Operations UDM Search or IBM QRadar AQL or Sumo Logic Cloud SIEM Rules expression or Rapid7 InsightIDR LEQL or Graylog Search or OpenSearch Lucene or OpenSearch PPL PPL or Grafana Loki LogQL or SQLite SQL or Zircolite SQLite — with the log-source profile the engine picked, the field map it used, and everything it could not express. Converting a rule you have unlocked costs no further credit.

See it run on a free rule →Convert your own rule →