Altcoin News: Hackers Break into Cloud Cryptocurrency Mining Services

March 16, 2019, by Marko Vidrih on ALTCOIN MAGAZINE

The cybersecurity unit of the American telecommunications operator AT & T reported that the main purpose of hacking the cloud servers of various companies was mining cryptocurrency.

According to information security experts, even a significant drop in the market did not affect the frequency of hacking of cloud servers. In this case, four attack vectors are most often used: access to the container management platform, hacking of the control panel, theft of access to software interfaces (API), and the distribution of infected images to the Docker system.

Analysts said hackers used unauthenticated management interfaces and open APIs to gain access to cloud capacities. Then these computational resources were used for the extraction of cryptocurrency.

Representatives from AT & T recalled the attack, which exploited a vulnerability in the open container management system Kubernetes. Hackers used hacked servers on Amazon Web Services to extract Monero cryptocurrency and steal client data. Similar happened with the cloud resources of Tesla.

As reported by Kaspersky Labs, in 2018, 13 million cases of cryptojacking were recorded in the world — the number of incidents increased by 400% compared to last year.

Author: Marko Vidrih