How to Find and Remove a Hidden Miner Virus on Your PC - Artex (2024)

Often, some people build their income on not entirely honest schemes. With the development of technical progress, carrying out such activities is improving, and new ones are appearing. With the advent of computers, the global expansion of computer networks, and the emergence of a whole virtual world with its currencies, it became possible to steal virtual computing resources from unprotected users.

In the previous article, our central crypto-enthusiast Alex told us about hidden mining and its dangers. This article will learn how to properly check your PC for such viruses-mainers and remove them in time without consequences for your equipment.

To check your computer for hidden mining, you can run Windows Task Manager (by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del and activating Task Manager) or another program that allows you to monitor the CPU, GPU, memory, disk space, network activity and what processes are running on the system.

You should pay attention to processes that are consuming too many resources. A more detailed study of these processes, in which folder they are located, how they are started, what network addresses they connect to, allows you to determine their reliability. It is convenient to use Process Monitor utility for this purpose.

In addition, you should check the list of programs in the computer autoloader and carefully check which programs are automatically loaded on the computer when it is switched on. This is best done using the Autoruns program.

You should check your computer’s firewall to see if certain programs are allowed to have network activity. If some program has an obscure name and has full access to the network, you should examine it in more detail by searching for information about it on the network and, if necessary, delete it or prohibit it from accessing the Internet.

If you use the regular Windows firewall, you can see and adjust the permissions of programs to access the network through its menu of additional parameters. This will also allow you to find out who is mining from your computer. Knowing how to detect hidden mining programs will allow you to remove them and safely use your equipment.

How to Detect a Mining Virus

The very first thing an illegal program should detect is antivirus. But, when a hacker uses advanced programs that automatically perform training and add the miner to the list of trusted programs, this may not work.

Checking your computer for a mining virus can be more reliable if you boot the operating system from a different, clean media and run a good antivirus with updated databases in a known clean environment. It is advisable to perform this procedure periodically, even if you are sure that there are no mining programs, to search for Trojans and spyware modules on your computer.

The presence of hidden programs that use the computer for mining can be determined by a number of characteristic signs. They are not necessarily indicative of the presence of a hidden miner, but by the combination of signs will help you better understand if everything is okay with your computer:

• The increased load on the computer when mining causes a strong slowdown of its work, increased time of opening pages on the Internet, slowness of games and delays when watching video files.
• Computer equipment begins to consume significantly more electricity, gets hotter, and its cooling system is constantly running at maximum capacity.
• A large amount of storage space is missing, from several gigabytes and up, and the hard drive access LED is showing constant activity.
• The computer is constantly exchanging data with the Internet, even if no one is using it. The computer’s own drain of traffic is circ*mstantial evidence pointing to hidden mining.
• During a computer boot, windows of incomprehensible programs briefly appear, which disappear very quickly.
• These signs may indicate the need to reinstall the operating system or wear and tear on the hardware and are often signs of viruses, including hidden mining programs. In order to prevent cryptojackers from getting on your computer, you need to know how to protect yourself from hidden mining.

If you suspect that there are mining programs on your computer, you should perform a number of simple operations. To protect against viruses, including hidden mining programs, you need to do the following:

• Be sure to install a good antivirus on your computer and regularly update its antivirus database and scan for possible threats.
• Have an image of a clean, tested operating system with the most necessary programs installed and restore it when the first signs of infection appear, or, better yet, regularly once every 2-3 months as a preventive measure.
• Include in the hosts file a blocking of malicious sites according to the lists available on the open resource GitHub, according to the algorithm described in the protection against browser mining.
• Allow only verified programs to run. To do this, modify the local security policy by running the Secpol MSC program, where you create a restricted programs policy, in the properties of which you activate the rules regarding restricted use of all files (except libraries), and activate the option to ignore certificate rules.
• Allow access to the computer only to the allowed ports. This is done in the firewall and antivirus settings.
• Prohibit remote Internet access to the home router and change the default password set on it (according to its user manual).
• If these actions will not get rid of the virus, then restrict its access to the Internet so that it does not consume the resources of your computer.

Programs to Remove Mining Viruses

To remove mining viruses, you can use a good antivirus program, which before using it, you must update the database. Norton Antivirus, Kaspersky antivirus and others show good results when protecting against mining by hackers. For any security-conscious user, using an anti-virus against hidden mining should be the norm.

Protecting your computer from hidden miners requires some knowledge from the user and constant monitoring of new tools that hackers use to do so. The main thing is to use preventive measures, which consist of following security measures when surfing the Internet and using pirated software.

Browser Mining Protection

Significant signs of browser mining is the slowing of the computer on some sites, high CPU load when viewing certain sites, especially when viewing sites with movies, pirated programs, semi-legal photos. The following methods are used to protect against mining in the browser:

• Blocking malicious sites used for hidden mining in the hosts service file.
• Using anti-mining software that also removes mining viruses. To this end, you can use a variety of utilities, for example, the program for removing hidden mining Anti-WebMiner gives good results.
• Using filters in uBlock, AdBlock and similar apps.

Google Protection

To combat hidden mining, the Google Play store has banned the placement of programs that perform mining on its site since July 2018. Google’s Chrome browser allows you to protect yourself against mining in the browser by using add-ons.

By activating “Protect your device from dangerous sites” and in the advanced settings menu “Find and remove malware.” To detect mining when the Chrome browser is open, you should also press Shift+ESC and analyze which processes consume the most resources.

What Next

Many scammers use someone else’s processing power to mine cryptocurrencies. The main thing is to detect hidden mining on your computer and remove it. The Artex Global team hopes that this article helped you to solve your problem. Follow our articles and explore the world of cryptocurrencies and mining with us. If you missed our previous articles, we advise you to study them, so you don’t miss important information, for example, Poloniex cryptocurrency exchange review or Indacoin cryptocurrency exchange review.