Home Malware Programs Botnets VictoryGate

VictoryGate

Posted: April 24, 2020

VictoryGate is a cryptocurrency mining botnet whose activity was first spotted in May 2019 – of course, ever since the botnet was discovered, its campaigns have been observed by malware researchers closely. At the peak of its activity, the VictoryGate Botnet reached over 35,000 members, and, surprisingly, over 90% of them were using IP addresses originating from Peru. The majority of the other 10% were also identified as systems in Latin America.

The goal of the authors of the VictoryGate was to deploy a trojanized cryptocurrency miner to the infected system and then harvest its hardware resources to mine for the Monero cryptocurrency. As you can probably guess, all of the generated revenue was transferred to the wallet of the attacker, and victims had no idea that their computers were used to make money for cybercriminals.

The good news is that the primary control server of the VictoryGate has been taken down, and malware experts have managed to redirect all members of the botnet to a sinkhole that does not allow the cryptocurrency miner to work, and helps the experts discover the infected systems. Apparently, over 3,000 unique botnet members try to connect to VictoryGate's control server every day.

As for the tricks used to spread the VictoryGate before it was taken down, there are reports that the attackers might have relied on a piece of malware that latched itself onto connected removable storage devices. This means that if a USB drive was used on an infected system, the malware would copy itself to it, and then infect other devices that the USB drive is attached to. While this is a very old-school propagation campaign, it has certainly proven to be successful since the botnet managed to amass over 35,000 members in less than a year.

Botnets have become a very lucrative business for cybercriminals – one of the main reasons for this is the fact that they do not have to stick to infecting just computers. Modern botnets also can work with various routers, smart devices, and other Internet-of-Things gadgets that are connected to the Internet. To be sure that none of your devices will become a part of a botnet, we advise you to use a reputable anti-malware service, as well as apply the most recent security patches and firmware updates.

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