Adobe Flash is known to be a common vulnerability, and notorious hackers exploit it from time to time. The use of fake Adobe Flash update popups on websites is another commonly used attack method.
Following a similar line, a recent type of fake Flash update was uncovered by a security researcher from Palo Alto Networks' Team 42. Unlike previous poorly designed malware discovered, this one comes with an additional way to deceive.
Since cryptominers are the hottest category of malware, this fake Flash update installs an XMRig cryptominer. As a result, your computer's processing power continues to be used in the background to mine free digital currencies.
The research identified 113 examples of fake update malware from March 2018 with Windows executables starting with AdobeFlashPlayer_. While 77 of them contained malware with a CoinMiner tag, the remaining samples had other tags.
"Windows provided a standard warning about an unknown publisher, where victims can easily click on vulnerable Windows hosts," the report states.
It is worth noting that the network traffic generated during the infection process mainly contains the Flash update. However, soon the cryptominer starts generating traffic related to mining the XMRig cryptocurrency.
With the help of update traffic and Adobe popups, this malware tries hard to trick users. However, if a system has good web filtering, the malware could be easily detected.
