Adylkuzz Crypto-Miner

Posted: May 19, 2017

Threat Metric

The Threat Meter is a malware assessment that SpywareRemove.com's research team is able to give every identifiable malware threat. Our Threat Meter includes several criteria based off of specific malware threats to value their severity, reach and volume. The Threat Meter is able to give you a numerical breakdown of each threat's initial Threat Level, Detection Count, Volume Count, Trend Path and Percentage Impact. The overall ranking of each threat in the Threat Meter is a basic breakdown of how all threats are ranked within our own extensive malware database. The scoring for each specific malware threat can be easily compared to other emerging threats to draw a contrast in its particular severity. The Threat Meter is a useful tool in the endeavor of seeking a solution to remove a threat or pursue additional analytical research for all types of computer users.

The following fields listed on the Threat Meter containing a specific value, are explained in detail below:

Threat Level: The threat level scale goes from 1 to 10 where 10 is the highest level of severity and 1 is the lowest level of severity. Each specific level is relative to the threat's consistent assessed behaviors collected from SpyHunter's risk assessment model.

Detection Count: The collective number of confirmed and suspected cases of a particular malware threat. The detection count is calculated from infected PCs retrieved from diagnostic and scan log reports generated by SpyHunter.

Volume Count: Similar to the detection count, the Volume Count is specifically based on the number of confirmed and suspected threats infecting systems on a daily basis. High volume counts usually represent a popular threat but may or may not have infected a large number of systems. High detection count threats could lay dormant and have a low volume count. Criteria for Volume Count is relative to a daily detection count.

Trend Path: The Trend Path, utilizing an up arrow, down arrow or equal symbol, represents the level of recent movement of a particular threat. Up arrows represent an increase, down arrows represent a decline and the equal symbol represent no change to a threat's recent movement.

% Impact (Last 7 Days): This demonstrates a 7-day period change in the frequency of a malware threat infecting PCs. The percentage impact correlates directly to the current Trend Path to determine a rise or decline in the percentage.

Threat Level:	8/10
Infected PCs:	251

First Seen:	May 19, 2017
Last Seen:	July 23, 2020
OS(es) Affected:	Windows

The Adylkuzz Crypto-Miner is a Trojan that uses the infected PC's hardware for generating cryptocurrency via background processes. Since these attacks don't provide symptoms or a user interface for the user of the compromised machine, passive anti-malware protection and safe Web usage habits are your best defenses against this Trojan. Use specialized anti-malware utilities for identifying or uninstalling the Adylkuzz Crypto-Miner, which will attempt to conceal its components or means of entry from any casual observation.

Your Choice of Consequences for Security Failure: Hardware Damage or Locked Files

While the campaigns for file-encrypting threats like the WannaCryptor Ransomware and the '.wcry File Extension' Ransomware are seeing increased attention, thanks to news of associated NSA exploits, other threat actors also are making different uses out of the same security loopholes. Recently, malware experts managed to verify another kind of Trojan abusing the backdoor loopholes of both DoublePulsar and EternalBlue for compromising new systems. Besides copying the WannaCrypto Ransomware's infection strategy, this other threat, the Adylkuzz Crypto-Miner, also takes steps to isolate the PC from any future infections from competing sources.

The Adylkuzz Crypto-Miner's campaign appears to be global in scale and is targeting a variety of network-vulnerable systems to distribute itself to as many servers as possible per individual security breach. Simultaneously, the Adylkuzz Crypto-Miner also shuts down SMB (or Server Message Block) networking communications, which may interfere with file-sharing, networked printing tasks and other activities. The threat actors most likely do this to keep other threats from gaining access to the infected servers, including additional, redundant versions of the Adylkuzz Crypto-Miner. The Trojan, then, mines the isolated systems for a cryptocurrency.

Like the Kirk Ransomware or the NsCpuCNMiner, the Adylkuzz Crypto-Miner generates an alternative cryptocurrency, Monero, instead of the traditional Bitcoin. In the meantime, its intensive resource usage for creating this digital currency can cause performance problems or even hardware failure.

Keeping Your Hardware Off Limits from Trojan Excavation

The Adylkuzz Crypto-Miner belongs to a classification of threats that don't display symptoms or user interfaces of any type, besides the performance problems they might provoke. As previously noted, its delivery mechanism, the DoublePulsar vulnerability, also is a viable threat for installing other types of threatening software. Initial infections may be thanks to such proliferation strategies as forged e-mail attachments or brute-force attacks, the latter of which depend on bad password management to break into a network.

Other than limiting network traffic, the Adylkuzz Crypto-Miner doesn't attack the victim's PC directly. However, extended cryptocurrency miner infections may use your graphics card, CPU and other components without any safety measures in place to prevent burnout. If you feel that your network or personal computer may be under attack by a threat of this type, allow your anti-malware products to analyze the environment, including all active memory processes, and remove the Adylkuzz Crypto-Miner safely.

Many of the infection vectors related to the Adylkuzz Crypto-Miner can be prevented from loading, as long as you're using updated software. A March-dated security update by Microsoft corrects one of the most egregious of these network vulnerabilities and is an easy way to make sure your servers will not fall prey to the latest in hardware-mining technology.

Technical Details

Registry Modifications

The following newly produced Registry Values are:

Regexp file mask%WINDIR%\Prefetch\secscan.exe