Botcoin: Monetizing Stolen Cycles

Danny Yuxing Huang; Hitesh Dharmdasani; Sarah Meiklejohn; Vacha Dave; Chris Grier; Damon McCoy; Stefan Savage; Nicholas Weaver; Alex C. Snoeren; Kirill Levchenko

doi:10.14722/ndss/2014.23044

Botcoin: Monetizing Stolen Cycles

Danny Yuxing Huang, Hitesh Dharmdasani, Sarah Meiklejohn, Vacha Dave, Chris Grier, Damon McCoy, Stefan Savage, Nicholas Weaver, Alex C. Snoeren, Kirill Levchenko

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Research output: Contribution to conference › Paper › peer-review

Abstract

At the current stratospheric value of Bitcoin, miners with access to significant computational horsepower are literally printing money. For example, the first operator of a USD $1,500 custom ASIC mining platform claims to have recouped his investment in less than three weeks in early February 2013, and the value of a bitcoin has more than tripled since then. Not surprisingly, cybercriminals have also been drawn to this potentially lucrative endeavor, but instead are leveraging the resources available to them: stolen CPU hours in the form of botnets. We conduct the first comprehensive study of Bitcoin mining malware, and describe the infrastructure and mechanism deployed by several major players. By carefully reconstructing the Bitcoin transaction records, we are able to deduce the amount of money a number of mining botnets have made.

Original language	English (US)
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.14722/ndss/2014.23044
State	Published - 2014
Event	21st Annual Network and Distributed System Security Symposium, NDSS 2014 - San Diego, United States Duration: Feb 23 2014 → Feb 26 2014

Conference

Conference	21st Annual Network and Distributed System Security Symposium, NDSS 2014
Country/Territory	United States
City	San Diego
Period	2/23/14 → 2/26/14

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Control and Systems Engineering
Safety, Risk, Reliability and Quality
Computer Networks and Communications

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10.14722/ndss/2014.23044

Cite this

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abstract = "At the current stratospheric value of Bitcoin, miners with access to significant computational horsepower are literally printing money. For example, the first operator of a USD $1,500 custom ASIC mining platform claims to have recouped his investment in less than three weeks in early February 2013, and the value of a bitcoin has more than tripled since then. Not surprisingly, cybercriminals have also been drawn to this potentially lucrative endeavor, but instead are leveraging the resources available to them: stolen CPU hours in the form of botnets. We conduct the first comprehensive study of Bitcoin mining malware, and describe the infrastructure and mechanism deployed by several major players. By carefully reconstructing the Bitcoin transaction records, we are able to deduce the amount of money a number of mining botnets have made.",

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AU - Huang, Danny Yuxing

AU - Dharmdasani, Hitesh

AU - Meiklejohn, Sarah

AU - Dave, Vacha

AU - Grier, Chris

AU - McCoy, Damon

AU - Savage, Stefan

AU - Weaver, Nicholas

AU - Snoeren, Alex C.

AU - Levchenko, Kirill

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AB - At the current stratospheric value of Bitcoin, miners with access to significant computational horsepower are literally printing money. For example, the first operator of a USD $1,500 custom ASIC mining platform claims to have recouped his investment in less than three weeks in early February 2013, and the value of a bitcoin has more than tripled since then. Not surprisingly, cybercriminals have also been drawn to this potentially lucrative endeavor, but instead are leveraging the resources available to them: stolen CPU hours in the form of botnets. We conduct the first comprehensive study of Bitcoin mining malware, and describe the infrastructure and mechanism deployed by several major players. By carefully reconstructing the Bitcoin transaction records, we are able to deduce the amount of money a number of mining botnets have made.

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Botcoin: Monetizing Stolen Cycles

Abstract

Conference

ASJC Scopus subject areas

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