CryptoGuard: Lightweight Hybrid Detection and Response to Host-based Cryptojackers in Linux Cloud Environments

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Park, Gyeonghoon, Kim, Jaehan, Choi, Jinu, Kim, Jinwoo
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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author Park, Gyeonghoon
Kim, Jaehan
Choi, Jinu
Kim, Jinwoo
author_facet Park, Gyeonghoon
Kim, Jaehan
Choi, Jinu
Kim, Jinwoo
contents Host-based cryptomining malware, commonly known as cryptojackers, have gained notoriety for their stealth and the significant financial losses they cause in Linux-based cloud environments. Existing solutions often struggle with scalability due to high monitoring overhead, low detection accuracy against obfuscated behavior, and lack of integrated remediation. We present CryptoGuard, a lightweight hybrid solution that combines detection and remediation strategies to counter cryptojackers. To ensure scalability, CryptoGuard uses sketch- and sliding window-based syscall monitoring to collect behavior patterns with minimal overhead. It decomposes the classification task into a two-phase process, leveraging deep learning models to identify suspicious activity with high precision. To counter evasion techniques such as entry point poisoning and PID manipulation, CryptoGuard integrates targeted remediation mechanisms based on eBPF, a modern Linux kernel feature deployable on any compatible host. Evaluated on 123 real-world cryptojacker samples, it achieves average F1-scores of 96.12% and 92.26% across the two phases, and outperforms state-of-the-art baselines in terms of true and false positive rates, while incurring only 0.06% CPU overhead per host.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_18324
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle CryptoGuard: Lightweight Hybrid Detection and Response to Host-based Cryptojackers in Linux Cloud Environments
Park, Gyeonghoon
Kim, Jaehan
Choi, Jinu
Kim, Jinwoo
Cryptography and Security
K.6.5; D.4.6; C.2.0
Host-based cryptomining malware, commonly known as cryptojackers, have gained notoriety for their stealth and the significant financial losses they cause in Linux-based cloud environments. Existing solutions often struggle with scalability due to high monitoring overhead, low detection accuracy against obfuscated behavior, and lack of integrated remediation. We present CryptoGuard, a lightweight hybrid solution that combines detection and remediation strategies to counter cryptojackers. To ensure scalability, CryptoGuard uses sketch- and sliding window-based syscall monitoring to collect behavior patterns with minimal overhead. It decomposes the classification task into a two-phase process, leveraging deep learning models to identify suspicious activity with high precision. To counter evasion techniques such as entry point poisoning and PID manipulation, CryptoGuard integrates targeted remediation mechanisms based on eBPF, a modern Linux kernel feature deployable on any compatible host. Evaluated on 123 real-world cryptojacker samples, it achieves average F1-scores of 96.12% and 92.26% across the two phases, and outperforms state-of-the-art baselines in terms of true and false positive rates, while incurring only 0.06% CPU overhead per host.
title CryptoGuard: Lightweight Hybrid Detection and Response to Host-based Cryptojackers in Linux Cloud Environments
topic Cryptography and Security
K.6.5; D.4.6; C.2.0
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.18324