Monero (XMR) is the most popular crypto currency when it comes to using malware to mine. Palo Alto Networks reported that at least 5 percent of all XMR were mined by malware. This corresponds to a value of approximately 90 million euros.

In a report on the growth of crypto mining, the Palo Alto Network Research Center found that Monero is by far the most popular crypto currency for the use of malware mining. A good 80 percent of all malware is mined by Monero. In the past, BTC-ECHO has reported on many different malware attacks that use the victims‘ ultimate computing power to mine Monero.

How the researchers got the Bitcoin profit information

Monero is a private crypto currency. All transactions are anonymous by default. Moreover, the Monero mining algorithm is „ASIC-resistant“, which means that XMR can only be mined with a CPU or GPU. These Bitcoin profit circumstances make it economical and safe to use malware to mine. In return, the computers of ignorant people are infected with Bitcoin profit software, which then calculates the proof of work in the background. Since Monero is private, no information can be obtained from blockchain analyses.

Instead, the Palo Alto Network uses its own WildFire malware analysis to detect the number of crypto-mineral malware. From the nearly 500,000 samples, three dimensions in particular could be read:

the crypto currency concerned
The wallet and e-mail address that was used to connect to a mining pool.
the Mining Pool
Here it turned out already that Monero is with 84 per cent, the most minted crypto currency. A good 2,300 XMR Wallet addresses were identified. In the next step, the mining pools themselves were asked about payouts to the respective addresses. While the Monero Blockchain does not disclose any information about money flows, mining pools can disclose the data of their users. It turned out that almost 800,000 XMR were sent to these addresses.

Unequal distribution in the Bitcoin profit Payouts

While more than 2,000 Bitcoin profit addresses were identified, a more detailed Bitcoin profit analysis revealed that only just under half received an amount of more than 0.01 XMR (approx. 1 euro). Only 244 of the wallet addresses received a payout of over 100 XMR (approx. 10,000 Euros) and just 16 addresses collected over 10,000 XMR (approx. 1 million Euros). Palo Alto Networks explains the large discrepancy by malfunctions of the malware.

The malware hash rate is 19 MH/s, which is about 2 percent of the current global Monero hash rate.