{
  "family": "xmrminer",
  "sample_count": 1,
  "category": "trojan",
  "description": "<h3>Executive Summary</h3>\nXMRig (often detected generally as XMRMiner or CoinMiner.XMR) is a legitimate, open-source Monero (XMR) CPU/GPU miner that has been overwhelmingly weaponized by threat actors. When deployed maliciously, it operates as a Cryptojacking Trojan, silently exhausting the compromised host's processing power to mine cryptocurrency for the attacker, leading to severe hardware degradation, massive power consumption, and operational instability.\n\n<h3>Infection Vector and Technical Capabilities</h3>\nMalicious XMRMiner variants are distributed through nearly every available vector: bundled in pirated software, dropped by initial access trojans (like Emotet or Trickbot), or deployed laterally across corporate networks by exploiting unpatched vulnerabilities (like EternalBlue or Log4j).\n\nOnce resident on a host, the weaponized miner prioritizes persistence and evasion:\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Resource Exhaustion (Mining):</strong> The core payload maxes out the CPU (and sometimes the GPU) to compute cryptographic hashes for the Monero network. These hashes are sent to a mining pool controlled by the attacker.</li>\n<li><strong>Defense Evasion:</strong> Malicious variants are often heavily modified to avoid detection. They may inject their mining threads into legitimate processes (like `svchost.exe` or `notepad.exe`) using process hollowing. Many variants actively monitor the active process list; if the user opens Task Manager or Process Explorer, the malware temporarily suspends mining to hide the 100% CPU utilization spike.</li>\n<li><strong>Persistence:</strong> The miner establishes persistence using Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) event subscriptions, hidden Scheduled Tasks, or by masquerading as a critical Windows Service.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<h3>Threat Assessment</h3>\nWhile Cryptominers do not actively destroy data, they are a critical security threat. A cryptomining infection guarantees that an attacker has remote code execution (RCE) on the endpoint. Furthermore, the extreme load on the hardware leads to system freezing, application crashes, and reduced hardware lifespans due to severe thermal stress.\n\n<h3>Incident Response and Remediation</h3>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Performance Monitoring:</strong> Utilize enterprise monitoring tools to identify endpoints exhibiting sustained, unexplained CPU/GPU utilization or high battery drain.</li>\n<li><strong>Endpoint Eradication:</strong> Isolate the endpoint and perform a deep system scan. Due to the use of process injection and WMI persistence, standard removal often fails; a dedicated offline scan or complete re-imaging of the machine may be required.</li>\n<li><strong>Network Blocking:</strong> Block outbound traffic to known cryptocurrency mining pools and Stratum protocol ports (often TCP 3333, 4444, 7777, 8888) at the perimeter firewall.</li>\n</ul>",
  "cta": "Published by the SystemHelpdesk team.",
  "aliases": [
    "CoinMiner.XMR",
    "Trojan.XMRig",
    "Riskware.Miner"
  ],
  "enrichment_level": "insufficient_information",
  "faq": [],
  "faq_count": 0,
  "mitre_attack": [
    "T1496",
    "T1055",
    "T1562.001",
    "T1546.003"
  ],
  "cisa_advisory": null,
  "last_updated": "2026-07-01T17:15:09Z",
  "type": "Cryptominer",
  "target_industries": [
    "Global / Opportunistic"
  ],
  "motivation": "Opportunistic",
  "threat_actors": [
    "Unknown / Cybercriminal"
  ],
  "target_geographies": [
    "Global"
  ]
}