Passive Income Earned By Attackers By Selling Clients’ Internet Bandwidth

In order to make unlawful money, cybercriminals are actively targeting internet connections. According to cyber security experts, in the cybercrime environment, a strategy involving the misuse of proxyware is gaining momentum.

Auctioning Internet Bandwidth

The threat actors are generating money illegally. They are already doing so by attacking internet-sharing through proxyware sites like Nanowire and Honeygain.

• In exchange for just a modest fee, these services enable the customers to upload a tiny portion of their internet bandwidth.
• To make even more revenue, the threat actors have been seen installing virtual currency miners and info-stealers.
• A malware family has been discovered that is distributing an updated version of a Honeygain client, XMRig miner, and info-stealer.
• Platforms like Honeygain, for example, should restrict the number of machines that may be connected to a specific account. Threat actors, on the other hand, may always create several accounts to expand their operating possibilities.

 Working

Commercializing additional bandwidth is indeed a tremendously profitable business strategy. It is lucrative for consumers. Also, it is gaining momentum among threat actors as well.

1. In a common attack operation, the threat actors silently install malicious codes on the victim’s devices, which are packaged with legitimate proxyware client software.
2. After then, the ransomware family tries to download proxyware on the targeted machine.
3. It then registers the program under an id established by the hackers in order to pay the threat actors a referral incentive.
4. When the proxyware client is activated, it begins selling the target’s bandwidth without their knowledge.

 In a few cases, the threat actors may disable warnings on the client that might alert the victim.

 Final Notes

Proxyware services might herald the emergence of a new danger category, akin to crypto-jacking. The danger allows the threat actors to take advantage of the extra capacity without leaving any evidence for victims. Furthermore, threat actors can simply prey on legitimate users who are eager to donate their resources via proxyware services without generating any concerns.