Smominru Malware Hijacked Half-Million PCs to To Mine Monero

Over half million Windows based PCs have been infected with Smominru malware that installs a custom version of XMRig is to mine Monero. This was revealed in a recent report that was published recently by Carbon Black Security.

Smominru also steals information from vulnerable targets ( including external IP addresses, internal IP addresses, domain information, usernames and passwords) and send it over to a command and control server (C&C or C2) owned by Smominru’s operators. Access to the hacked systems are being sold on Dark Web at a rate of $6.75 each.

Smominru operators are using different techniques to infect machines. They mainly rely on the use of the EternalBlue (CVE-2017-0144) exploit, but they’ve also deployed EsteemAudit (CVE-2017-0176), both aimed at taking over machines running unpatched Windows OS.

Smominru is not a new malware, it has been around for almost three years now. Last year, Smominru made around $2.3 million for it’s operators (source).