Kinsing

S0599

Malware.View on attack.mitre.org

About this malware

Kinsing is Golang-based malware that runs a cryptocurrency miner and attempts to spread itself to other hosts in the victim environment.

Techniques used17

Procedure examples17

TechniqueProcedure example
T1018
Remote System Discovery

Kinsing has used a script to parse files like /etc/hosts and SSH known_hosts to discover remote systems.

T1021.004
SSH

Kinsing has used SSH for lateral movement.

T1053.003
Cron

Kinsing has used crontab to download and run shell scripts every minute to ensure persistence.

T1057
Process Discovery

Kinsing has used ps to list processes.

T1059.004
Unix Shell

Kinsing has used Unix shell scripts to execute commands in the victim environment.

T1071.001
Web Protocols

Kinsing has communicated with C2 over HTTP.

T1078
Valid Accounts

Kinsing has used valid SSH credentials to access remote hosts.

T1083
File and Directory Discovery

Kinsing has used the find command to search for specific files.

T1105
Ingress Tool Transfer

Kinsing has downloaded additional lateral movement scripts from C2.

T1110
Brute Force

Kinsing has attempted to brute force hosts over SSH.

T1133
External Remote Services

Kinsing was executed in an Ubuntu container deployed via an open Docker daemon API.

T1222.002
Linux and Mac Permissions

Kinsing has used chmod to modify permissions on key files for use.

T1496.001
Compute Hijacking

Kinsing has created and run a Bitcoin cryptocurrency miner.

T1552.003
Shell History

Kinsing has searched bash_history for credentials.

T1552.004
Private Keys

Kinsing has searched for private keys.

View all 17 procedure examples

Groups that use it0

None recorded.

Campaigns0

None recorded.

References3

  1. Aqua Kinsing April 2020 Open source
    Singer, G. (2020, April 3). Threat Alert: Kinsing Malware Attacks Targeting Container Environments. Retrieved April 1, 2021.
  2. Aqua Security Cloud Native Threat Report June 2021 Open source
    Team Nautilus. (2021, June). Attacks in the Wild on the Container Supply Chain and Infrastructure. Retrieved August 26, 2021.
  3. Sysdig Kinsing November 2020 Open source
    Huang, K. (2020, November 23). Zoom into Kinsing. Retrieved April 1, 2021.

Data from MITRE ATT&CK® (Enterprise). ATT&CK® is a registered trademark of The MITRE Corporation.