T1496 - Resource Hijacking#
Adversaries may leverage the resources of co-opted systems to complete resource-intensive tasks, which may impact system and/or hosted service availability.
One common purpose for Resource Hijacking is to validate transactions of cryptocurrency networks and earn virtual currency. Adversaries may consume enough system resources to negatively impact and/or cause affected machines to become unresponsive.(Citation: Kaspersky Lazarus Under The Hood Blog 2017) Servers and cloud-based systems are common targets because of the high potential for available resources, but user endpoint systems may also be compromised and used for Resource Hijacking and cryptocurrency mining.(Citation: CloudSploit - Unused AWS Regions) Containerized environments may also be targeted due to the ease of deployment via exposed APIs and the potential for scaling mining activities by deploying or compromising multiple containers within an environment or cluster.(Citation: Unit 42 Hildegard Malware)(Citation: Trend Micro Exposed Docker APIs)
Additionally, some cryptocurrency mining malware identify then kill off processes for competing malware to ensure it’s not competing for resources.(Citation: Trend Micro War of Crypto Miners)
Adversaries may also use malware that leverages a system’s network bandwidth as part of a botnet in order to facilitate Network Denial of Service campaigns and/or to seed malicious torrents.(Citation: GoBotKR) Alternatively, they may engage in proxyjacking by selling use of the victims’ network bandwidth and IP address to proxyware services.(Citation: Sysdig Proxyjacking)
Atomic Tests#
Atomic Test #1 - FreeBSD/macOS/Linux - Simulate CPU Load with YesThis test simulates a high CPU load as you might observe during cryptojacking attacks.#
End the test by using CTRL/CMD+C to break.
Supported Platforms: linux, macos#### Attack Commands: Run with sh
yes > /dev/null
Invoke-AtomicTest T1496 -TestNumbers 1
Detection#
Consider monitoring process resource usage to determine anomalous activity associated with malicious hijacking of computer resources such as CPU, memory, and graphics processing resources. Monitor for suspicious use of network resources associated with cryptocurrency mining software. Monitor for common cryptomining software process names and files on local systems that may indicate compromise and resource usage.
Shield Active Defense#
Behavioral Analytics#
Deploy tools that detect unusual system or user behavior.
Instrument a system to collect detailed information about process execution and user activity, develop a sense of normal or expected behaviors, and alert on abnormal or unexpected activity. This can be accomplished either onboard the target system or by shipping data to a centralized analysis and alerting system.
Opportunity#
There is an opportunity to detect the presence of an adversary by identifying and alerting on anomalous behaviors.
Use Case#
By looking for anomalies in host resource consumption and alerting on suspect activity, the defender can detect the use of system resources at odd times or at odd levels.
Procedures#
Use behavioral analytics to detect Living Off The Land Binaries (LOLBins) being used to download and execute a file. Use behavioral analytics to identify a system running development tools, but is not used by someone who does development. Use behavioral analytics to identify abnormal system processes being used to launch a different process.