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Cryptominer Triage: Document the IOCs

MediumDigital Forensics & Incident Response20-30 min
The brief

High CPU was reported on this host and a cryptominer is suspected. Before anyone eradicates anything, do the triage: find the miner and DOCUMENT your indicators of compromise. Investigate the box (processes, binaries, and the usual persistence spots), then write a findings report to /root/case/findings.txt that records two concrete IOCs: the full path of the malicious binary, and the full path of the persistence file that relaunches it. Grading reads /root/case/findings.txt and checks it names both. (Do not delete anything — this is the documentation phase.)

What you'll do
  • Locate the malicious miner binary and note its full path
  • Identify the persistence file that relaunches it
  • Record both IOCs in /root/case/findings.txt

Hands-on lab: you work on a real Linux box in your browser, graded on the machine's actual state.