Security Center:Best practices for handling mining programs

Limits

You can handle mining programs that are detected on your server only if you use the Anti-virus, Advanced, Enterprise, or Ultimate edition of Security Center. Security Center Basic supports only threat detection and security alerting. You cannot use Security Center Basic to handle alerts. If you use Security Center Basic, you must purchase the Anti-virus, Advanced, or Enterprise edition before you can handle alerts. For more information, see Purchase Security Center.

Free trial

Security Center provides a 7-day free trial of the Ultimate edition for users of the Basic edition.

If you have not purchased Security Center, you can apply for a free trial of the Ultimate edition to handle mining programs. For more information about how to apply for a free trial of the Ultimate edition, see Apply for a free trial of Security Center Ultimate.

Characteristics of mining programs

• Mining programs can overclock the CPU, which consumes a large number of CPU resources and affects other applications that run on your server.
• The characteristics of mining programs are similar to the characteristics of computer worms. After a mining program intrudes into your server, the mining program spreads to the servers that are deployed in the same internal network. After the servers are compromised, the mining program achieves persistence on the servers.
• In most cases, mining programs spread to multiple system services and are difficult to remove from the system. Mining programs may repeatedly appear, and system commands may be replaced with malicious scripts. As a result, the system may run malicious scripts such as XOR DDoS. You must remove all trojans and persistent webshells from your server within the execution period of mining programs. This way, mining programs are prevented from appearing in the future.

Determine whether your assets contain mining programs

If the CPU utilization of your server significantly increases, for example, to 80% or higher, and an unknown process continues to transmit packets, a mining program is running on your server. For more information, see How do I check whether mining programs exist in my assets?

Use Security Center to handle mining programs

1. Access the Alerts page of the Security Center console.
2. In the alert list of the Alerts page, find an alert that is generated for a mining program in the Event column, and click Process in the Actions column.
   If a mining program is detected, Security Center generates an alert.

   Notice If you find alerts in the console or receive notifications, we recommend that you use the antivirus feature to scan and remove hidden malicious files and persistent malicious files at the earliest opportunity. For more information, see Overview.
3. In the dialog box that appears, perform the following steps to remove the mining program: Select Anti-Virus, select Isolate the source file of the process and End the process., and then click Process Now to prevent the mining program from restarting.

   Security Center allows you to handle multiple alerts at a time. If you want to handle the alerts that are triggered by the same rule or rules of the same type at a time, select Batch unhandled.

4. To handle an alert that is related to mining, find the alert, click Process in the Actions column, and then select Block in the dialog box that appears. For example, the alert is generated for mining pool communications.
   Security Center generates policies to prevent servers from communicating with the IP addresses of mining pools. This way, you have sufficient time to handle security events. You can add the IP addresses of mining pools to a security group to block the IP addresses.
5. View the alerts that are generated for suspicious processes, and check whether unusual scheduled tasks exist.
   
6. Enable the virus blocking feature.
   If you fail to remove mining programs that are retained on your server and the mining programs repeatedly appear on your server, you can enable the virus blocking feature of Security Center to block mining programs and prevent these mining programs from running. For more information about how to enable the virus blocking feature, see Use proactive defense.

   • You can use the antivirus feature of Security Center to scan your server. The scan results are displayed on the Alerts page. The feature also removes the persistent items of malicious files. The persistent items include self-starting items and scheduled tasks. For more information, see Overview.
     Note After the virus scan is complete, we recommend that you handle the alerts that are reported on the Alerts page at the earliest opportunity to ensure the security of your server.
   • You can also use the feature of attack source tracing that is provided by Security Center to trace the intrusion process and analyze how mining programs intrude into your server.

Use other methods to handle mining programs

Mining programs can insert a large number of persistent webshells into a victim server to obtain the most profits. In this case, viruses are difficult to remove or cannot be removed. If you have not purchased Security Center, you can perform the following steps to detect and handle mining programs.

Linux servers

1. Run the following command to query the executable file of the mining program.

   ls -l /proc/xxx/exe           // xxx indicates the process ID (PID) of the mining program. 

2. Remove the executable file of the mining program.
3. Identify the mining program among the processes that cause high CPU consumption and terminate the program.
4. Check whether the firewall of your server contains the address of the mining pool to which the mining program belongs and delete the address of the mining pool.
   1. Run the following command to detect unusual communication addresses and open ports that are not required for normal workloads.

       iptables -L -n

      
   2. Run the following command to delete the address of the mining pool.

       vi /etc/sysconfig/iptables

5. Run the following command to check whether scheduled tasks exist.

   crontab -l

   

   You can handle suspicious scheduled task files based on the check results. This prevents repeated intrusions.

6. Run the following command to check whether the SSH public key contains mining viruses. This prevents persistent webshells.

   cat .ssh/authorized_keys

   
7. Check whether mining programs exist on other servers that are deployed on the same internal network. This way, you can protect the servers from mining programs at the earliest opportunity.

Windows servers

1. Run the following command in PowerShell to identify mining programs among the processes that cause high CPU consumption.

    ps | sort -des cpu
    While(1) {ps | sort -des cpu | select -f 15 | ft -a; sleep 1; cls}

2. Run the following command to query the executable file of the mining program and the parameters in the command that is used to start the mining program.

   wmic process where processid=xxx get processid,executablepath,commandline,name     //xxx indicates PID.

3. Terminate the mining program and remove the executable file of the mining program.
4. Run the following command to detect suspicious ports of your server.

   netstat -ano | findstr xxx            // xxx indicates the suspicious port.

5. Run the following command to check whether the hosts file in the server contains the address of the mining pool to which the mining program belongs.

   type  C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts

6. Run the following command to check whether the scheduled tasks specified by the mining program exist on your server.

   schtasks /query

Other methods

If the underlying system components of your server are affected by viruses, you may fail to troubleshoot the issues or remove the viruses. We recommend that you back up your data and restore the operating system of your server. This ensures that the mining program is completely removed. To use this method, perform the following operations:

1. Create a snapshot to back up data on your server. For more information, see Create a snapshot of a disk.
2. Initialize the operating system of the server. For more information, see Re-initialize a system disk.
3. Create a disk from the snapshot. For more information, see Create a disk from a snapshot.
4. Attach the disk to the server after the operating system is reinstalled. For more information, see Attach a data disk.

For more information, see Emergency response service.