Coinkrypt Android malware used to mine digital currencies

The attackers used the Coinkrypt to recruit bot to compose a crypto currency mobile botnet, the specific malware is designed exclusively to mine Bitcoin and also less popular coins like Litecoin and Dogecoin.

“We recently saw several versions of this malware family we call CoinKrypt, which is designed to hijack your phone in order to use it to mine digital currency for somebody else.”

“While it doesn’t steal any information from your phone, mining can be incredibly resource-intensive and, if allowed to run without any limits, could potentially damage hardware by causing it to overheat and even burn out.”

Currently, detection levels for CoinKrypt malware is very low, its distribution appears to be primarily through Spanish underground forums while most of the detections are in France.The malware is considered too noisy, its presence on the Android presence cause the rapid consumption for battery charge. Another side effect is that CoinKrypt might suck up user’s data plan by periodically downloading the block chain, or a copy of the currency transaction history, a total amount of data of several gigabytes. Full Article