They warn about a botnet that steals data from its victims

Cisco Systems‘ threat intelligence team discovered a new botnet called „Prometei“. This botnet mined Monero (XMR) and stole data from the attacked system.

According to the document sent to Bitcoin Future, the botnet has been active since May. It is based on 15 executable modules that recover the passwords of the administrators of the infected computer.

The validity of the passwords is verified by sending them to a control server connected to other networks. Once the malware gains access to the user’s administrative rights, it proceeds to log all data contained in the system.

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Cisco Talos estimates that this botnet can contain up to 10,000 systems at a time. To date, the network continues to operate with a hash rate of over 1M Hash/sec (million hashes per second).

Threat Level
Speaking to Cointelegraph, Vanja Svajcer, a Cisco Talos researcher, said Prometei generates its owner about $1,500 a month.

Svajcer said that while this doesn’t seem like much compared to other figures cited, „he comfortably earns much more than the average salary in some countries.

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Svajcer explained to Cointelegraph

„The most dangerous part of Prometei is the theft of credentials. You could consider the attacker with his bot to be the same as a burglar in your house. Naturally, the thief will look through all the drawers and find several keys. He takes the keys and asks another person (another infected system) to check if any of the keys work in your car, safe, etc. Obviously, when criminals break into a house, a new set of opportunities opens up. It’s very similar with this botnet.

The study states that Prometei makes a moderate profit for a single developer who „is most likely based in Eastern Europe“.

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Cointelegraph recently reported on malware that targets old vulnerabilities in the Windows operating system in an effort to mine Monero.