Botcoin: Monetizing Stolen Cycles

Author(s): Danny Yuxing Huang, Hitesh Dharmdasani, Sarah Meiklejohn, Vacha Dave, Chris Grier, Damon McCoy, Stefan Savage, Nicholas Weaver, Alex C. Snoeren and Kirill Levchenko

Download: Paper (PDF)

Date: 22 Feb 2014

Document Type: Briefing Papers

Additional Documents: Slides

Associated Event: NDSS Symposium 2014

Abstract:

Botmasters have experimented with many different mechanisms for monetizing compromised user PCs over the years. The past 18 months, however, have seen the rise of a particularly direct method: printing money—Bitcoin, to be exact. This paper presents the first large-scale study of the methods, prevalence, and effectiveness of Bitcoin-mining botnets.