Chapter 12: Analyzing and Detecting Crypto-Mining Attacks

Crypto-mining attacks are becoming more notable as blockchain and cryptocurrency are becoming more and more popular. Cryptocurrency is earned as the transaction fee of decentralized transactions on a blockchain for utilizing compute resources. The process of earning cryptocurrency for validating transactions using compute resources is called crypto-mining and is conducted by a software called a crypto-miner. Security researchers have found hacking incidents related to various crypto-miner binaries running within victims' infrastructures. The default openness of Kubernetes clusters and the availability of the extensive compute power required for mining makes Kubernetes clusters a perfect target for crypto-mining attacks. The complexity of Kubernetes clusters also makes crypto-mining activities hard to detect.

Since we've already been introduced to different Kubernetes built-in security mechanisms and open source...