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Doctor Web researchers recently uncovered malware designed to mine Litecoins, which has been spreading online for at least the past year.

The malware, which Doctor Web identifies as Trojan.BtcMine.221, comes disguised as various applications and browser extensions -- one, called Shopping Suggestion, claims to help users find lower prices when shopping online.

"In fact Trojan.BtcMine.221 mines Litecoins (an alternative to Bitcoins), for which it utilitizes hardware resources of the computer without the user's knowledge," the researchers write.

According to Doctor Web, the botnet created via the malware included 311,477 infected computers in December 2013, with the largest number (56,576) located in the United States, followed by Brazil with 31,567 bots, Turkey with 25,077, and Russia with 22,374.

The researchers say the cybercriminals behind the malware are making an average of $1,454.53 a day from the botnet, with an average processing power of 167,647 KH/s.