Applied Cybernetics Group
T1496.001 Compute Hijacking
- Technique
T1496.001- Tactics
- Impact
- Research, 90 days
- 1
- KEV CVEs mapped
- 0
- SigmaHQ rules
- 0
- Elastic, Splunk
- 2
- thrunt rules
- 0
- Upstream
- https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1496/001
MITRE description
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) 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](https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1496/001) and cryptocurrency mining.(Citation: CloudSploit - Unused AWS Regions) 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.(Citation: Unit 42 Hildegard Malware)(Citation: Trend Micro Exposed Docker APIs) Additionally, some cryptocurrency mining malware identify then kill off processes for competing malware to ensure it’s not competing for resources.(Citation: Trend Micro War of Crypto Miners)
Research citing this technique
Reports and advisories from the last 90 days that cite this technique.
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2026-10-08Huntress: Threat Actors Exploit Critical AhsayCBS Flaws to Drop Webshells and XMRig Cryptominer
Detection coverage
Elastic and Splunk rules
- Newly Observed Process Exhibiting High CPU Usage (elastic)
- Memory Swap Modification (elastic)