Bitcoin-mining Trojan lurking on Skype

Bitcoin-mining malware is nothing new, but with the success of Bitcoin and the renewed interest it is receiving lately, cyber crooks are again concentrating their efforts to harness the power of random computers in order to create them.

Skype users are currently in danger of getting saddled with this type of malware.

According to Kaspersky Lab expert Dmitry Bestuzhev, messages received from friends saying “this is my favorite picture of you” and offering a shortened link will direct users to a compromised website serving a dropper Trojan.

Once installed and run, the dropper “delivers” many other pieces of malware, including one that has Bitcoin-mining capabilities.

“If you see your machine is working hard, using all available CPU resources, you may be infected,” warns Bestuzhev.

The campaign, started last week, has been quite successful. At its height, some 2,000 users would click on the link and get infected, since the dropper had a very low detection rate.