Recently, new cryptocurrency mining malware has been discovered and disseminated through a well-known social network, spreading rapidly among users.
Digmine is the name of a mining software infection that is distributed very quickly through Facebook Messenger, possibly because it is one of the most used social networks around the world. This malware is in charge of mining the Monero cryptocurrency without the authorization of the team owner and is distributed through the chat window, with a message that shows a video file that, when reproduced, installs the files of the infection in the browser (specifically in Google Chrome) and try to stay on the computer as long as possible.
This software is different from the rest of the web miners, since the infection is maintained in the browser and is not limited to visiting a specific web page, as in the case of CoinHive, which works with certain pages (some of them pages pornographic) that use this service as an alternative to advertisements. The main victims of the infection with Digmine are Windows users, since the executable files contain the extension .exe, so, until now, Linux and Mac users are safe from the propagation.
Once the video has been played and the files are installed on the machine that has been infected with the software, it manipulates the user's Facebook account if it is configured to automatically log in and send new files to all the user's contacts. Cases of this miner have been reported in South Korea, Azerbaijan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Ukraine, Thailand and Venezuela.
The Facebook team was informed of the infection and reported having stopped the propagation of all the messages it could link with the malicious software. However, there may be infections that have not yet been controlled, so users should be especially careful with the content they see and share in this social network, if they do not want their equipment to be used as mining equipment without their authorization.
In terms of security, so far this year many users have been harmed by this type of software that uses a percentage of the equipment to undermine the Monero cryptocurrency, perhaps because it offers a certain level of privacy that hides the identity of users doing more difficult the location of cyber criminals after attacks.