Enhancing DeCrypto: Finding Cryptocurrency Miners Based on Periodic Behavior

Abstract

While the popularity of cryptocurrencies and the whole industry's value are rising, the number of threat actors who use illegal “coin miner mal ware” is increasing as well. The threat actors commonly use computational resources of companies, research and educational institutions, or end users. In this paper, we analyzed the long-term periodic behavior of the cryptocurrency miners communicating in computer networks. We propose a novel method for cryptominers detection using specially designed periodicity features. The detection algorithm is based on the mathematical detection of periodic Flow time series (FTS) and feature mining. Altogether with the Machine Learning technique, the resulting system achieves high-precision performance. Furthermore, our approach enhances a flow-based cryptominers detection system DeCrypto to further improve its reliability and feasibility for high-speed networks.