Attackers are constantly reinventing ways of monetizing their tools. Cisco Talos recently discovered a complex campaign employing a multi-modular botnet with multiple ways to spread. This threat, known as “Lemon Duck,” has a cryptocurrency mining payload that steals computer resources to mine the Monero virtual currency. The actor employs various methods to spread across the network, like sending infected RTF files using email, psexec, WMI and SMB exploits, including the infamous Eternal Blue and SMBGhost threats that affect Windows 10 machines. Some variants also support RDP brute-forcing. In recent attacks we observed, this functionality was omitted. The adversary also uses tools such as Mimikatz, that help the botnet increase the amount of systems participating in its mining pool.

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