Compromised Google Cloud Platforms (GCP) were being used by malicious actors to perform cryptocurrency mining, according to a report by Google’s Cybersecurity Action Team. The report said that of the 50 compromised GCP instances that its team observed, 86% of them were being used to perform cryptocurrency mining, which they described as a "cloud resource-intensive for profit activity". This report shows how malicious actors are driven by cryptocurrencies and related activities to indulge in illegal practices such as, in this case, hacking platforms. Money laundering concerns and scams have also been linked to the crypto market which is unregulated in most countries. A crypto bill is soon to be tabled in India's Parliament. How did the malicious actors gain access? According to the report, "Malicious actors gained access to the Google Cloud instances by taking advantage of poor customer security practices or vulnerable third-party software in nearly 75% of all cases." [caption id="attachment_151036" align="aligncenter" width="682"] Apart from crypto mining, hackers used stolen access to look up other vulnerable victims | Source: Google[/caption] [caption id="attachment_151049" align="aligncenter" width="693"] Analysis of the reasons behind the compromise | Source: Google[/caption] The researchers said that the malicious actors routinely scan public IP addresses to keep a track of vulnerable Google cloud spaces. This enabled the actors to compromise vulnerable Google cloud platforms in a short amount of time. In 40% of instances the time to compromise was under eight hours. This suggests that the public IP address space is routinely scanned for vulnerable Cloud…
