Chinese Bitcoin Miners Hit by Ransomware Attack Demanding 10 BTC, Threatening Their Machines

A mysterious hacker has reportedly implemented a virus in the ASIC mining machines of various bitcoins miners in China, demanding they either pay a 10 BTC ($ 36,000) ransom or infect others with the virus to avoid losing their machines and facilities.

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If the green screen was clicked on, a popup message that threatened the mining and its operation came up, written in both English and Chinese.

The message reads:

I am hAnt! I continue to attack your Antminer. IPS and the number of antminiversts. I will stop attacking you! Otherwise I will turn off your fan and overheat protection, which will cause you to burn your machine.

Download to specific firmware that will update their machines to infect others within its network, or to pay the hacker to 10 BTC ransom, worth about $ 36,000 at press time, for it to stop attacking.

It appears to only affect Antminers. For Jiang Zhuoer, the founder of prominent cryptocurrency mining pool BTC.Top, has been tracking the virus for a long time, and has seen it on various machines, including the Antminer S9 and T9, as well as on the Litecoin L3 + miner.

Speaking to local news 8BTC, he revealed it's a Linux-based miner. For cC, despite the threats it makes it impossible to be very profitable, as it is not difficult to fix the infection. "Byte libraries" and control panels.

For Zhuoer, the infection came from overclocking firmware, released by anonymous developers. Overclocking ASIC mining machines allows miners to get a better hashrate out of them, but increases their power consumption and shortens their lifespan.

The hacker (s) behind hAnt, Zhuoer added, is likely not Chinese, although the infection is spreading through Baidu. According to 8BTC's translation, he said:

It suggests two possibilities – the hacker is deliberately targeting China where bitcoins mines are concentrated; Second, Chinese miners inadvertently helped spread the virus before they realized the[ir] overclocked firmware was infected.

Dealing With the Infection

According to miners, they comply with their demands or get rid of the infection, the hackers still make sure they get paid. This is the case for the coins that are mined to become their own, often late at night.

In some cases, the hacker has changed the address for a few hours to avoid detection and steal as much mining rewards as possible. The report claims a few hours could net the hacker $ 355, if they infect large mining farms.

To avoid being infected, Zhuoer suggested avoiding installing third-party firmware and regularly changing the login passwords of the routers miners use in their networks. If you are infected this will not work as a record of password changes.

Virus' targeting cryptocurrency users are not new. Cryptocurrency payments. Bitcoin stealing malware has even been found in cheats for the popular game 'Fortnite.'