Trojan.Poweliks!gm

Posted: October 13, 2014

Threat Metric

The Threat Meter is a malware assessment that SpywareRemove.com's research team is able to give every identifiable malware threat. Our Threat Meter includes several criteria based off of specific malware threats to value their severity, reach and volume. The Threat Meter is able to give you a numerical breakdown of each threat's initial Threat Level, Detection Count, Volume Count, Trend Path and Percentage Impact. The overall ranking of each threat in the Threat Meter is a basic breakdown of how all threats are ranked within our own extensive malware database. The scoring for each specific malware threat can be easily compared to other emerging threats to draw a contrast in its particular severity. The Threat Meter is a useful tool in the endeavor of seeking a solution to remove a threat or pursue additional analytical research for all types of computer users.

The following fields listed on the Threat Meter containing a specific value, are explained in detail below:

Threat Level: The threat level scale goes from 1 to 10 where 10 is the highest level of severity and 1 is the lowest level of severity. Each specific level is relative to the threat's consistent assessed behaviors collected from SpyHunter's risk assessment model.

Detection Count: The collective number of confirmed and suspected cases of a particular malware threat. The detection count is calculated from infected PCs retrieved from diagnostic and scan log reports generated by SpyHunter.

Volume Count: Similar to the detection count, the Volume Count is specifically based on the number of confirmed and suspected threats infecting systems on a daily basis. High volume counts usually represent a popular threat but may or may not have infected a large number of systems. High detection count threats could lay dormant and have a low volume count. Criteria for Volume Count is relative to a daily detection count.

Trend Path: The Trend Path, utilizing an up arrow, down arrow or equal symbol, represents the level of recent movement of a particular threat. Up arrows represent an increase, down arrows represent a decline and the equal symbol represent no change to a threat's recent movement.

% Impact (Last 7 Days): This demonstrates a 7-day period change in the frequency of a malware threat infecting PCs. The percentage impact correlates directly to the current Trend Path to determine a rise or decline in the percentage.

Threat Level:	9/10
Infected PCs:	83

First Seen:	October 13, 2014
Last Seen:	April 3, 2020
OS(es) Affected:	Windows

Trojan.Poweliks!gm is a general identifier for components of the Poweliks family of backdoor Trojans. As per usual for this type of threat, Trojan.Poweliks!gm may receive commands from external servers that let Trojan.Poweliks!gm exert control over your PC, which may be the underlying cause of botnet-based DDoS attacks, poor system performance and theft of privileged information. Use anti-malware products as necessary to remove Trojan.Poweliks!gm from your system along with other threats, such as related Trojan droppers.

Trojan.Poweliks!gm: a Program that Uses Your PC for Personal Purposes

Trojan.Poweliks!gm is a relatively low-level threat (due, primarily, to its easy identification and removal by suitable anti-malware tools) indicative of the presence of Poweliks backdoor Trojans. These Trojans conduct harmful actions potentially including Denial of Service attacks, click-fraud and BitCoin mining by using the infected computer's system resources. Because Trojan.Poweliks!gm may vary its behavior with the instructions of its administrator, there are not necessarily any symptoms to associate with every single Trojan.Poweliks!gm infections.

On the other side, malware experts often find that backdoor Trojans are prone to conducting attacks with specific symptoms, many of which one may see in some of the latest Trojan.Poweliks!gm incidents. These symptoms encompass:

Unusually poor performance and system slowdowns may occur for no obvious reason.
Your Internet connectivity may destabilize.
You may observe multiple, unusual program processes being run concurrently. These often are detectable via Task Manager and similar process-managing utilities.
You also may observe error messages related to the .NET Framework or PowerShell, both of which are automatically installed by Trojan.Poweliks!gm and other Powerliks Trojans.

The backdoor vulnerability responsible for these symptoms may let third parties use Trojan.Poweliks!gm to link your PC to a botnet, exploiting its system resources for any of a range of different crimes. The same security hole also may assist with the installation of other threats, the theft of information or induce negative changes to your security settings.

Catching the Documents Carrying Trojan.Poweliks!gm

Trojan.Poweliks!gm sometimes is installed via Trojan.Mdropper, a threatening Word or Excel Trojan that exploits vulnerabilities in those programs. In the past, malware researchers frequently found these types of Trojan installers being distributed through e-mail spam and, in some cases, targeted attacks against government agencies and corporations. Scanning suspicious file attachments should let your anti-malware solutions identify the installer before Trojan.Poweliks!gm compromises your PC.

Recent versions of Trojan.Poweliks!gm Trojans have been known to hijack Registry entries in ways that could harm the Windows operating system, if they're deleted entirely. Instead of taking that risk, malware researchers find it safest to encourage using trusted anti-malware programs to delete Trojan.Poweliks!gm and revert its changes to your Windows Registry keys.

Trojan.Poweliks!gm only has been observed on Windows OSes but does have compatibility with most modern versions of that OS.

Trojan.Poweliks!gm

Threat Metric

Trojan.Poweliks!gm: a Program that Uses Your PC for Personal Purposes

Catching the Documents Carrying Trojan.Poweliks!gm

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