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CoinMiner Malware

Posted: April 12, 2019

CoinMiner is a cryptocurrency-mining Trojan that uses your system's resources for generating money such as Monero for a threat actor. Although not all cryptocurrency miners are threatening necessarily, CoinMiner distinguishes itself from safe applications by running without your consent, hiding its UI, and preventing you from changing its settings. Most versions of this threat don't install themselves, and users should have their anti-malware products conduct in-depth scans for removing CoinMiner and other Trojans associated with the infection appropriately.

When Your PC's the Excavated Mountain

When file-locker Trojans' campaigns go down, cryptocurrency-mining ones like those of CoinMiner replace them. The current CoinMiner infections are the result of shifts in the cryptocurrency marketplace, particularly, for Monero, which threat actors favor for the anonymity of its private ledger. While CoinMiner runs all but unseen, the damage it can harm to your PC's hardware can be highly detectable and irreversible, in the end.

CoinMiner is a 2018-era, Windows-based cryptocurrency-mining Trojan. It hides its executable inside of a Windows AppData sub-folder and uses a Registry exploit for launching a persistent, Monero-mining routine. This function loads an invisible instance of Internet Explorer and creates Monero coins inside the threat actor's account. Users should note that the payload doesn't open any visible browser windows and doesn't give the local user a user interface or control over the mining configuration.

Malware researchers find most setups for cryptocurrency-mining Trojans like CoinMiner are using stealth for keeping their activities hidden over the long-term. However, a less cautious or more impatient attacker could reconfigure CoinMiner's setup for maximizing profit at the cost of the infected Windows system's performance or hardware longevity, particularly, for the CPU.

What to Do As Trojans Quietly Mine Away

The possible damage of a CoinMiner infection can include destroying critical components of your computer's hardware architecture, although this is a worst-case scenario. Ordinarily, cryptocurrency-mining threats, including both CoinMiner and others, like PsMiner, the SpeakUp Backdoor, the Princess Evolution Ransomware, or Prowli, keep the symptoms of their mining operation to a minimum. Furthermore, malware experts find most Trojan infections with payloads similar to CoinMiner's features including other strategies for compromising available PCs over local networks.

CoinMiner doesn't include password-cracking, self-copying, spamming, or other features related to propagation, but its existence implies that a threat with such features may be present. Users should respond by disabling Internet connections and scanning all vulnerable systems and may detect mining functions by watching for temperature changes and other rises in hardware-usage stats. Malware experts don't rate removing CoinMiner as difficult for most anti-malware products since the program has no self-defense features for itself.

Just like a poorly-dug tunnel can collapse on itself, a sloppy deployment of CoinMiner can cause harm to your computer of a permanent nature. Stop infections before they begin with good security standards like installing all patches for your software, and being careful around any e-mail attachments that may be the beginnings of mining expeditions.

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