Google Cloud Unveils Crypto Mining Threat Detection

Google Cloud on Monday (Feb. 7) expanded its security platform to include detection for cryptocurrency mining in virtual machines, Google Cloud executive Sunil Potti told VentureBeat.

A Google Cloud report in November showed that 86% of security breaches on the platform included crypto mining activities, but “it’s very hard to detect that unless you really instrument your app,” said Potti, vice president and general manager for Google Cloud’s security business.

Google Cloud’s Security Command Center Premium customers will have access to Virtual Machine Threat Detection (VMTD) through a public preview.

“We’re just bringing all that knowledge, with a little bit of enterprise consumption, to any enterprise customer who wants to move their VMs over” Potti told VentureBeat.

Cryptocurrency mining is often the sign that a broader attack is underway or coming, said Roger Koehler, vice president of threat ops at managed detection and response firm Huntress, in the report.

“They can go and sell that access on the black market,” he said in a previous interview. “Somebody bigger and badder may buy that, and do something more detrimental.”

Google Cloud in November said that “data theft did not appear to be the objective” of compromises for crypto mining — but that “in some instances, multiple malicious actions were performed from within a single compromised instance.”

Data theft “remains a risk associated with the cloud asset compromises as bad actors start performing multiple forms of abuse,” the company said late last year.

Virtual Machine Threat Detection will be expanded to include other capabilities during the next few months and eventually offered to anyone who wants it, according to a Google Cloud blog post.

Related: Wells Fargo to Use Google, Microsoft Azure Cloud Services to Support New Digital Strategy

In September, Wells Fargo debuted a new digital infrastructure strategy using a multi-cloud method through Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure with third-party data centers.

Google Cloud will provide advanced workloads and complex artificial intelligence (AI) and data solutions, which will let Wells Fargo access more speed.