Here’s another reason not to pirate games and software – you may be installing cryptomining software that has already netted cybercriminals $2 million.
This is according to a report from Avast regarding a new strain of malware it’s calling Crackonosh.
The malware was spotted after Avast users noticed the antivirus software was no longer on their PC. This prompted an investigation and Avast says signs point to this malware coming out of Czechoslovakia.
How does the malware spread? Piracy.
“Crackonosh is distributed along with illegal, cracked copies of popular software and searches for and disables many popular antivirus programs as part of its anti-detection and anti-forensics tactics,” writes Avast.
That’s not all it does as researchers found that Crackonosh installs itself by replacing critical Windows files and abuses Windows Safe mode to impair defenses,
While Avast noticed this problem it appears Crackonosh is looking for any of the following security solutions:
- Adaware
- Bitdefender
- Escan
- F-secure
- Kaspersky
- McAfee (scanner only)
- Norton
- Panda
Obfuscating it’s presence is only one feature of Crackonosh, the other is that it installs XMRig on your PC and mines cryptocurrency. According to Avast, one wallet it found payments of 9000XMR to a wallet which is roughly $2 million at today’s prices.
“Crackonosh shows the risks in downloading cracked software and demonstrates that it is highly profitable for attackers. Crackonosh has been circulating since at least June 2018 and has yielded over $2 000 000 USD for its authors in Monero from over 222,000 infected systems worldwide,” says Avast.
The firm has a detailed blog which includes steps you can take to remove Crackonosh from your system if you happen to be affected by it.
You can find all of those details here.
To avoid Crackonosh, quite simply, don’t pirate software.
“As long as people continue to download cracked software, attacks like these will continue to be profitable for attackers. The key take-away from this is that you really can’t get something for nothing and when you try to steal software, odds are someone is trying to steal from you,” concludes Avast.
[Image – CC 0 Pixabay]
