T1496.001: Compute Hijacking
Adversaries may leverage the compute resources of co-opted systems to complete resource-intensive tasks, which may impact system and/or hosted service availability.
One common purpose for Compute Hijacking is to validate transactions of cryptocurrency networks and earn virtual currency. Adversaries may consume enough system resources to negatively impact and/or cause affected machines to become unresponsive.[1] Servers and cloud-based systems are common targets because of the high potential for available resources, but user endpoint systems may also be compromised and used for Compute Hijacking and cryptocurrency mining.[2] Containerized environments may also be targeted due to the ease of deployment via exposed APIs and the potential for scaling mining activities by deploying or compromising multiple containers within an environment or cluster.[3][4]
Additionally, some cryptocurrency mining malware identify then kill off processes for competing malware to ensure it’s not competing for resources.[5]
Security context for executives and security teams
T1496.001: Compute Hijacking describes Adversaries may leverage the compute resources of co-opted systems to complete resource-intensive tasks, which may impact system and/or hosted service availability. One common purpose for [Compute Hijacking](https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1496/001) is to validate transactions of cryptocurrency networks and earn virtual currency. Adversaries may consume enough system resources to negatively impact and/or cause affected machines to become unresponsive.(Citation: Kaspersky Lazarus Under The Hood Blog 2017) Serve...
Executive priority
T1496.001: Compute Hijacking is an official MITRE ATT&CK technique. Glexia treats it as defensive behavior context for prioritizing monitoring, control validation, and response planning without using the object by itself as an attribution claim.
Technical view
Security teams should validate T1496.001: Compute Hijacking by reviewing the official ATT&CK relationships, mapped tactics (impact), supported platforms (Windows, IaaS, Linux, macOS), and available local telemetry before making detection or mitigation decisions.
Likely telemetry
- Official ATT&CK relationships and object metadata
- Cloud control-plane, SaaS audit, and container platform logs
- Network, endpoint, and security-tool telemetry
Detection direction
- Validate whether T1496.001: Compute Hijacking appears in your detection coverage and tabletop scenarios.
- Use the object to align executive risk language with SOC, incident response, and detection engineering work.
- Do not treat ATT&CK relationship context as attribution without corroborating evidence.
Mitigation priorities
- Map the object to existing controls and identify missing telemetry or response ownership.
- Prioritize mitigations that reduce exposure on the listed platforms and tactics.
- Review adjacent ATT&CK relationships before changing policy, detections, or reporting language.
Additional notes and limits
Baseline Glexia take generated from the official MITRE ATT&CK STIX object, source hash, tactics, platforms, and detection fields. It is safe to replace with a richer model-generated take for the same source hash later.
This baseline take is source-grounded and schema-validated, but it does not include environment-specific telemetry, incident evidence, or threat-intelligence corroboration.
Generated from the cited source records. This long-tail analysis has not been individually reviewed by a named human.
Compute Hijacking
Adversaries may leverage the compute resources of co-opted systems to complete resource-intensive tasks, which may impact system and/or hosted service availability.
One common purpose for Compute Hijacking is to validate transactions of cryptocurrency networks and earn virtual currency. Adversaries may consume enough system resources to negatively impact and/or cause affected machines to become unresponsive.[1] Servers and cloud-based systems are common targets because of the high potential for available resources, but user endpoint systems may also be compromised and used for Compute Hijacking and cryptocurrency mining.[2] Containerized environments may also be targeted due to the ease of deployment via exposed APIs and the potential for scaling mining activities by deploying or compromising multiple containers within an environment or cluster.[3][4]
Additionally, some cryptocurrency mining malware identify then kill off processes for competing malware to ensure it’s not competing for resources.[5]
How security teams should use this page
Treat this object as behavior context, not an attribution claim. Validate the related groups, software, data sources, and mitigations against official ATT&CK relationships and your own telemetry before making control-coverage decisions.
Related techniques
This mirrors the MITRE pattern of making group, software, campaign, and technique relationships scannable. Relationship notes come from mirrored ATT&CK relationship text when available.
| Domain | ID | Name | Relationship / procedure |
|---|---|---|---|
| Enterprise | T1496 | Resource Hijacking | This object subtechnique of Resource Hijacking. |
Groups, software, and campaigns
G0096: APT41
APT41 is a threat group that researchers have assessed as Chinese state-sponsored espionage group that also conducts financially-motivated operations. Active since at least 2012, APT41 has been observed targeting various industries, including but not limited to healthcare, telecom, technology, finance, education, retail and video game industries in 14 countries.[1] Notable behaviors include using a wide range of malware and tools to complete mission objectives. APT41 overlaps at least partially with public reporting on groups including BARIUM and Winnti Group.[2][3]
G0139: TeamTNT
TeamTNT is a threat group that has primarily targeted cloud and containerized environments. The group as been active since at least October 2019 and has mainly focused its efforts on leveraging cloud and container resources to deploy cryptocurrency miners in victim environments.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9]
G0106: Rocke
Rocke is an alleged Chinese-speaking adversary whose primary objective appeared to be cryptojacking, or stealing victim system resources for the purposes of mining cryptocurrency. The name Rocke comes from the email address "rocke@live.cn" used to create the wallet which held collected cryptocurrency. Researchers have detected overlaps between Rocke and the Iron Cybercrime Group, though this attribution has not been confirmed.[1]
G0108: Blue Mockingbird
Blue Mockingbird is a cluster of observed activity involving Monero cryptocurrency-mining payloads in dynamic-link library (DLL) form on Windows systems. The earliest observed Blue Mockingbird tools were created in December 2019.[1]
S0601: Hildegard
S0468: Skidmap
S0486: Bonadan
S0532: Lucifer
S1111: DarkGate
DarkGate first emerged in 2018 and has evolved into an initial access and data gathering tool associated with various criminal cyber operations. Written in Delphi and named "DarkGate" by its author, DarkGate is associated with credential theft, cryptomining, cryptotheft, and pre-ransomware actions.[1] DarkGate use increased significantly starting in 2022 and is under active development by its author, who provides it as a Malware-as-a-Service offering.[2]
S0599: Kinsing
S0492: CookieMiner
CookieMiner is mac-based malware that targets information associated with cryptocurrency exchanges as well as enabling cryptocurrency mining on the victim system itself. It was first discovered in the wild in 2019.[1]
S0451: LoudMiner
S0434: Imminent Monitor
Imminent Monitor was a commodity remote access tool (RAT) offered for sale from 2012 until 2019, when an operation was conducted to take down the Imminent Monitor infrastructure. Various cracked versions and variations of this RAT are still in circulation.[1]
C0045: ShadowRay
ShadowRay was a campaign that began in late 2023 targeting the education, cryptocurrency, biopharma, and other sectors through a vulnerability (CVE-2023-48022) in the Ray AI framework named ShadowRay. According to security researchers ShadowRay was the first known instance of AI workloads being activley exploited in the wild through vulnerabilities in AI infrastructure. CVE-2023-48022, which allows access to compute resources and sensitive data for exposed instances, remains unpatched and has been disputed by the vendor as they maintain that Ray is not intended for use outside of a strictly controlled network environment.[1]
All related ATT&CK context
Object version and sync metadata
The fields below describe the current mirrored snapshot. When Glexia retains multiple ATT&CK source imports, you can open the table to compare the same object across releases (hashes and MITRE timestamps). For MITRE’s own release notes and roadmap, see ATT&CK resources — Updates.
Imported snapshots across ATT&CK releases(2)
| Release | Bundle imported | Object version | Modified | Status | Raw hash |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 19.2 | 1.0 | Current bundle | f85446cbaffe… | ||
| 19.1 | 1.0 | Older bundle | f85446cbaffe… |
Mirrored ATT&CK source object
The raw object is retained through the mirrored ATT&CK source bundle and object hash. The raw endpoint returns the exact object from the mirrored bundle when available.
External references and citations
MITRE external references are preserved separately from Glexia analysis so citations remain traceable to their original source records.
- [1]Kaspersky Lazarus Under The Hood Blog 2017
GReAT. (2017, April 3). Lazarus Under the Hood. Retrieved April 17, 2019.
Open source URL - [2]CloudSploit - Unused AWS Regions
CloudSploit. (2019, June 8). The Danger of Unused AWS Regions. Retrieved October 8, 2019.
Open source URL - [3]Unit 42 Hildegard Malware
Chen, J. et al. (2021, February 3). Hildegard: New TeamTNT Cryptojacking Malware Targeting Kubernetes. Retrieved April 5, 2021.
Open source URL - [4]Trend Micro Exposed Docker APIs
Oliveira, A. (2019, May 30). Infected Containers Target Docker via Exposed APIs. Retrieved April 6, 2021.
Open source URL - [5]Trend Micro War of Crypto Miners
Oliveira, A., Fiser, D. (2020, September 10). War of Linux Cryptocurrency Miners: A Battle for Resources. Retrieved April 6, 2021.
Open source URL - [6]mitre-attackT1496.001Open source URL
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