According to local media, a virus is spreading in China, attacking ASIC miners mining cryptocurrency. Losses already amount to tens of thousands of dollars.
It seems that the virus infects, in the first place, the Antminer device from Bitmain. Extortionist requires 10 bitcoins, threatening, in case of failure, overheating of the equipment.
You can get rid of the virus by formatting the memory card of an infected ASIC – this process resembles reinstalling the OS on a regular PC. However, the process takes four days, during which the farm is idle, because it should be turned off, as soon as one miner becomes infected, otherwise the virus quickly spreads to other miners.
It seems that the source of the virus is overestimation of the processor clock frequency. If in a normal way, Bitmain miners are able to work at a speed of 13.5 terachashs / sec, then, due to an overestimate of the processor clock frequency, the speed can be increased to 18 terachashs / sec. One firmware seems to be infected with a virus.
The virus was first seen in August last year when it was discovered in Antminer S9 , T9, and even in the L3 + lightcoin miner. The virus runs on Linux.
BTC.Top founder Jiang Kyaw says :
“In the mining industry, the ASIC miner Avalon must control Raspberry Pi, a microcomputer for Linux systems. Ant Mine has a built-in control panel integrated with the Linux system, which gives the virus a chance. ”
A hacker is able to decide when he wants to activate a virus. Miner said that first he saw a green screen, and then – this is a message-picture:
Another miner, Wang Wei, said that at night the virus had secretly changed the address of a BTC purse of 4,000 devices belonging to it to the address of a hacker's BTC purse. According to Wei, after that the hacker began to receive $ 8,000 a day.
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