New research has shown that pirated copies of the popular new movie Spider-Man: No Way Home contain crypto-mining malware designed to mine the Monero cryptocurrency. According to researchers at ReasonLabs, the first infected copies were found in the Russian language. The movie is the first to gross more than $1 billion at the box office. However, since there is no way to watch the movie at home yet, torrented version have been leaking across several different sites over the past two weeks.
The malware does not compromise personal information, however, the Monero miner does damage to the victim’s computer. The miner runs for long periods and requires high CPU usage, causing the computer to slow down drastically. The malware is reportedly derived from the SilentXMRMiner open source project, which features a point-and-click interface that allows attackers to create new miners easily across a range of cryptocurrencies. Once the torrented film is downloaded, the malware adds exclusions to Windows Defender to prevent the malware’s actions from being tracked. It also creates persistence and a watchdog process to maintain activity.
Read More: Cryptomining Malware Found In Spider-Man: No Way Home Torrents
