Carbon Black researchers are tracking a cryptomining campaign that has already infected more that 500,000 machines with Smominru malware that enslaves them into a massive botnet. According to a new report[pdf], the infected machines are used to mine Monero (XMR) and the malware is also capable of “access mining,”

Threat actors are distributing malware via torrent sites in order to build a botnet, new ESET research shows. The malware, referred to as GoBotKR, is hidden in pirated copies of South Korean films, TV series and video games that are distributed via Korean and Chinese torrent sites. People who download

A researcher with Akamai has uncovered a highly destructive campaign that is rendering thousands of Internet-of-things (IoT) devices useless by wiping their firmware. The malware used to “brick” IoT devices is a new strain called Silex. While the functionality of targeted devices can technically be restored by reinstalling the firmware,

Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks carried out by botnets continue to be a major threat to websites, although attacks on Windows systems are declining in favor of campaigns targeting Linux machines and Internet-of-things (IoT) devices, new NSFOCUS research shows. The number of botnet attack instructions received by targets rose by 66.4%

A researcher with Morphus Labs has uncovered a botnet that is scanning the Internet for Windows machines that have a poorly secured Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) connection enabled. The botnet, dubbed GoldBrute, tries to obtain access to vulnerable machines by launching brute-forcing and credential stuffing attacks. GoldBrute has already identified

Researchers with Palo Alto Network’s Unit 42 have discovered a campaign targeting wireless presentation and display systems used by enterprises. The campaign was launched in January and involves a new variant of Mirai, an internet of things (IoT) botnet that up until now was known to target consumer IoT devices.

“The federal government should ‘lead by example’ when it comes to ensuring its computers and internet-linked devices aren’t hijacked by botnets, but industry should take the lead in determining just how those devices should be secured, according to a report released Wednesday. The report from the Homeland Security and Commerce