{
  "family": "malxmr",
  "sample_count": 1,
  "category": "advanced_threat",
  "description": "<h3>Executive Summary</h3>\nMalXMR is a pervasive and highly optimized malicious cryptocurrency miner (cryptojacking malware) specifically engineered to illicitly mine Monero (XMR). By stealthily hijacking the CPU resources of infected endpoints and servers, MalXMR generates cryptocurrency for its operators, resulting in severe performance degradation, hardware wear, and dramatically increased power consumption for the victim organization.\n\n<h3>Technical Implementation and Execution</h3>\nMalXMR is frequently deployed as a secondary payload by initial access brokers, dropped by exploit kits targeting unpatched vulnerabilities (such as ProxyLogon or Log4Shell on servers), or distributed via malicious spam campaigns.\n\nUpon execution, MalXMR focuses entirely on stealth and maximum CPU utilization:\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Process Hollowing and Injection:</strong> It routinely injects its highly optimized mining payload (often a modified version of the legitimate open-source XMRig miner) into legitimate Windows processes like `svchost.exe`, `conhost.exe`, or `notepad.exe` to mask its execution from system administrators.</li>\n<li><strong>Resource Evasion:</strong> Advanced variants of MalXMR actively monitor user activity. If the user moves the mouse or opens the Windows Task Manager, the miner will immediately suspend its threads to drop CPU usage to normal levels, avoiding detection.</li>\n<li><strong>Stratum Protocol:</strong> The malware communicates with remote, anonymized mining pools utilizing the Stratum mining protocol, receiving block calculations and returning valid hashes.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<h3>Operational Impact</h3>\nMalXMR causes significant operational disruption. Infected machines suffer from extreme latency, overheating, and frequent crashes. In enterprise environments, widespread cryptojacking infections dramatically increase cloud computing costs (if AWS/Azure instances are infected) and accelerate on-premise hardware degradation.\n\n<h3>Detection and Remediation</h3>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Performance Monitoring:</strong> Utilize endpoint management tools and cloud monitoring dashboards to alert on sustained, unexplained high CPU usage (often pinned at 90-100%) across multiple endpoints or server instances.</li>\n<li><strong>Network Traffic Analysis:</strong> Inspect outbound network traffic for connections utilizing the Stratum protocol (JSON-RPC over TCP) or connections to known cryptocurrency mining pools, often occurring over Port 3333 or Port 80/443 to blend in.</li>\n<li><strong>Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR):</strong> Deploy EDR solutions configured to detect process hollowing and the execution of known mining binaries operating under the guise of legitimate system processes.</li>\n</ul>",
  "cta": "Published by the SystemHelpdesk team.",
  "aliases": [
    "CoinMiner.MalXMR",
    "Trojan.MalXMR",
    "Riskware.BitCoinMiner"
  ],
  "enrichment_level": "insufficient_information",
  "faq": [],
  "faq_count": 0,
  "mitre_attack": [
    "T1496",
    "T1055",
    "T1059"
  ],
  "cisa_advisory": null,
  "last_updated": "2026-07-01T16:25:49Z",
  "type": "Cryptominer",
  "target_industries": [
    "Global / Opportunistic"
  ],
  "motivation": "Opportunistic",
  "threat_actors": [
    "Unknown / Cybercriminal"
  ],
  "target_geographies": [
    "Global"
  ]
}