DevilRobber Mac OS X Trojan horse spies on you, uses GPU for Bitcoin mining @ Naked Security.
Copies of the legitimate Mac OS X image editing app GraphicConverter version 7.4 were uploaded to file-sharing networks. However, they came with an unexpected addition.
Hidden inside the download was a copy of the OSX/Miner-D (also known as ‘DevilRobber’) Trojan horse. If your Mac computer was infected by the malware, the first thing you might notice is performance becoming sluggish.
That’s because OSX/Miner-D tries to generate Bitcoins, the currency of the anonymous digital cash system, by stealing lots of GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) time. GPUs are much better than regular CPUs at performing the mathematical calculations required for Bitcoin mining.
Yes, this Mac malware is stealing computing time as well as data.
Bitcoin values are dropping, but this is an interesting glimpse of future ways malware authors will try to generate… coin.
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