Security researchers at Palo Alto Networks have discovered the Graboid worm that spreads through Docker software containers and mines Monero cryptocurrency for the attackers. This is a new tactic and territory for crypto-mining worms. It is the first time such malware has been detected traversing software containers.

Once a core image repository is infected, anytime the image is pulled and used, the malware goes with it and is spawned to maliciously consume resources for crypto-mining. Traditional security software rarely looks inside containers, so these instances can be active for as long as the container is in use.

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