Malicious hackers keep showing their ability to evolve and diversify. A digital forensics investigation revealed that the creators of a massive botnet are using a picture of the famous singer Taylor Swift loaded with malware that integrates the affected systems into the massive network, used for cryptocurrency mining.
Although some reports claimed that the creators of the botnet stopped operating it, new signs of activity began to be recorded a few months later, detecting up to 4,000 new infections a day.
According to a report by digital forensics firm Sophos, hackers devised a new way to infect devices to integrate them into the botnet. Employing steganography, threat actors hide malicious files inside legitimate ones, in this case a malicious EXE is hidden in a JPEG image of the famous pop singer Taylor Swift.
SOURCE: Sophos