Butler Miner Trojan

The Butler Miner Trojan is a cryptocurrency-mining Trojan that creates money for criminals after hijacking your PC's hardware. Its attacks show limited symptoms, besides the instability that its non-consensual resource usage may create. Have your anti-malware programs uninstall the Butler Miner Trojan and act to block its installation, when appropriate, as a direct danger to your PC's longevity and performance.

Trojan Service with a Smile

Reminiscent of how Hidden Tear often is the default resource for developing file-locker Trojans, XMRig is becoming a frequent refrain in analyses of Bitcoin, Monero or Ethereum-mining ones. Malware researchers only just began identifying samples of another Trojan dropping XMRig automatically, configuring the theoretically safe program to run under circumstances where it hijacks strangers' hardware for creating money. The Butler Miner Trojan isn't the first or, likely, last cryptocurrency miner Trojan that uses this 'feature;' examples of others include the BlackRuby Ransomware, the WinstarNssmMiner Cryptojacking or RubyMiner.

By default, XMRig is a freeware 'mining' application that uses the CPU, instead of the GPU, for creating the Monero cryptocurrency. It loads this money into a wallet account that the user configures, and displays a Command Prompt-based window while it runs. However, the Butler Miner Trojan loads this program without displaying the user interface and sets the wallet to the threat actor's address automatically. Any PC that the Butler Miner Trojan infects is, effectively, a money generator without showing any overt, symptomatic behavior of the extra program's running continuously.

Any PC users with concerns about a possible the Butler Miner Trojan infection, or that of another cryptocurrency-mining Trojan, should monitor their system resources for any unusual behavior. Prolonged and excessively high CPU usage is atypical of a healthy Windows environment and can cause general performance issues, as well as, over the long-term, a possible total failure of hardware. For routine monitoring purposes, malware experts recommend using the Windows Task Manager, which users can open with the Ctrl+Shift+Escape or Ctrl+Alt+Del shortcuts, depending on their version of the OS.

Firing a Butler that's Making You Serve Him

While some entities in the cyber-security industry are claiming that the Butler Miner Trojan also possesses additional features not part of a Trojan miner's payload traditionally, such as screen capturing or keylogging, malware experts can't confirm these spyware functions. However, users with compromised PCs always should act under the assumption that passwords and other, private information may be misappropriated and in criminal ownership, and take precautions such as changing their login credentials. By itself, XMRig should cause no long-term hardware damage unless the user fails to resolve the infection promptly.

The Butler Miner Trojan uses the Windows Registry-based exploits for maintaining its persistence across reboots and can run without generating an interface or separate memory process. Active anti-malware software may identify this threat during the installation process and prevent it from occurring. Otherwise, you should scan your PC from a Safe Mode environment with updated anti-malware tools for uninstalling the Butler Miner Trojan and the associated mining application.

The Butler Miner Trojan can't make money if its victims don't enable it by ignoring the state of their computers passively. Crashes and similar performance issues are some of the many ways in which a cautious PC user can be tipped off to the possible presence of a program like the Butler Miner Trojan that's asking for more resources than it deserves.