Mobile Threat Catalogue

Abusing Device Resources for Computations

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Threat Category: Malicious or privacy-invasive application

ID: APP-38

Threat Description: While traditionally a threat against systems with greater individual system resources, the multitude of mobile devices provides an attacker who can run computations on a large number of compromised devices with an advantage in performimg other work. The computations performed on behalf of the attacker potentially cause a denial-of-service attack against the user due to the increased consumption of device resources such as battery power, computational power, network bandwidth, data usage limits, or device storage.

Threat Origin

Mobile Malware Mines Dogecoins Litecoins for Bitcoin Payout1

Exploit Examples

Androidos_kagecoin.hbt 2

Currency-mining Android malware is so aggressive it can physically harm phones 3

CVE Examples

Not Applicable

Possible Countermeasures

Mobile Device User

To reduce the risk of installing apps with trojan functionality, only download apps from official app stores.

Use malware detection apps that identify malware by anomalous energy consumption.

Enterprise

Use malware detection apps that identify malware by anomalous energy consumption.

References

  1. V. Zhang, “Mobile Malware Mines Dogecoins and Litecoins for Bitcoin Payout”, TrendLabs Security Intelligence Blog, 25 Mar. 2104; http://blog.trendmicro.com/trendlabs-security-intelligence/mobile-malware-mines-dogecoins-and-litecoins-for-bitcoin-payout/ [accessed 01/05/2017] ↩

  2. “androidos_kagecoin.hbt” in Threat Encyclopedia, TrendMicro, 2014; http://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/us/threat-encyclopedia/malware/AndroidOS_KageCoin.HBT [accessed 01/05/2017] ↩

  3. D. Goodin, “Currency-mining Android malware is so aggressive it can physically harm phones”, Ars Technica, 19 Dec. 2017; https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/12/currency-mining-android-malware-is-so-aggressive-it-can-physically-harm-phones/ [accessed 02/02/2018] ↩