Circuit: A JavaScript Memory Heap-Based Approach for Precisely Detecting Cryptojacking Websites

【Author】 Hong, Hyunji; Woo, Seunghoon; Park, Sunghan; Lee, Jeongwook; Lee, Heejo

【Source】IEEE ACCESS

【影响因子】3.476

【Abstract】Cryptojacking is often used by attackers as a means of gaining profits by exploiting users' resources without their consent, despite the anticipated positive effect of browser-based cryptomining. Previous approaches have attempted to detect cryptojacking websites, but they have the following limitations: (1) they failed to detect several cryptojacking websites either because of their evasion techniques or because they cannot detect JavaScript-based cryptojacking and (2) they yielded several false alarms by focusing only on limited characteristics of cryptojacking, such as counting computer resources. In this paper, we propose CIRCUIT, a precise approach for detecting cryptojacking websites. We primarily focuse on the JavaScript memory heap, which is resilient to script code obfuscation and provides information about the objects declared in the script code and their reference relations. We then extract a reference flow that can represent the script code behavior of the website from the JavaScript memory heap. Hence, CIRCUIT determines that a website is running cryptojacking if it contains a reference flow for cryptojacking. In our experiments, we found 1,813 real-world cryptojacking websites among 300K popular websites. Moreover, we provided new insights into cryptojacking by modeling the identified evasion techniques and considering the fact that characteristics of cryptojacking websites now appear on normal websites as well.

【Keywords】Codes; Computer security; Cryptocurrency; Engines; Instruction sets; Behavioral sciences; Syntactics; Cyberattack; Browsers; Browser security; web security; cryptojacking

【发表时间】2022

【收录时间】2022-09-22

【文献类型】实验仿真

【主题类别】

区块链治理-技术治理-加密劫持检测