A nasty new spam campaign is on the Skype (News - Alert) scene, one that is, in the words of Kapersky Lab Expert Dmitry Bestuzhev, capable of turning infected devices into a “slave of the bitcoin generator,” and causes CPU usage to skyrocket.

In a blog post, Bestuzhev shared a screenshot that a Skype client in Venezuela sent him of an infected computer. The expert says those in most danger of contracting the malware at this time are Italy, Russia, Poland, Spain, Costa Rica, Ukraine, Germany and other countries not specified.

The malware is fast on the move. Bestuzhev says the average clicking rate is 2,000 clicks per hour. The culprit trojan, “Trojan.Win32.Jorik.IRCbot.xkt,” originates from a server in India, according to Kapersky.

The malware also connects to a C2 server in Germany, the IP address of which is 213.165.68.138:9000. The process runs with the command:

?bitcoin-miner.exe -a 60 -l no -o http://suppp.cantvenlinea.biz:1942/ -u [email protected] -p XXXXXXXX, and replaces data with XXXXXX.

An infected device could slow down to the point of non-usability.

Skype users are strongly encouraged not to click on any random links that pop up via the video conferencing tool.

Additionally, users must be on the lookout for signs of infection. If one's device is working harder than usual – that's a sign of infection. If a device's CPU is being maxed out, that's another.Once the malware invades the system, it drops in even more pieces of malware, using Hotfile to grab the bits.

This isn't the first malware to strike Skype of late. Just last October, the site was slammed by a spam attack that was so severe that the government got involved and issued an advisory, warning users of the lethal malware.