EpicScale

Posted: March 9, 2015

Threat Metric

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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.

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Ranking:	16,509
Threat Level:	1/10
Infected PCs:	6,502

First Seen:	March 9, 2015
Last Seen:	February 10, 2025
OS(es) Affected:	Windows

Epic Scale is a cryptocurrency miner that generates Bitcoins and other, digital currencies through using your PC's unallocated resources. While Epic Scale isn't a threat and makes no attempts to hide itself from the PC's users, side effects of its installation may be detrimental. As an extra caveat, recent third-party bundles have included an apparent misconfiguration that installs Epic Scale automatically. A Potentially Unwanted Program may be judged on a case by case basis, but if you have any doubts about the appropriateness of this software's presence, malware experts can suggest deleting Epic Scale.

An Epic Scale of Non-Consensual System Hogging

Epic Scale is a Potentially Unwanted Program that markets itself as a means of using your system resources, such as your CPU, for solving third-party 'problems.' These problems include advanced mathematical equations and, of course, mining, AKA the generation of digital currencies like Bitcoin and Dogecoin. Although the user sees no profits from these activities, Epic Scale does claim to split its revenue with charitable organizations, thus providing an ostensible justification for installing Epic Scale.

Epic Scale's behavior is insufficient to classify it as an actual threat (the occasional misclassification by other PC security companies notwithstanding). However, this software has had recent changes in its distribution model that malware researchers found worthy of notice. Epic Scale may couple with third-party installers, but one of those, uTorrent, recently was confirmed to install Epic Scale automatically. BitTorrent Inc denies any issues with its current installation practices, despite numerous reports by its users of new updates placing Epic Scale on their hard drives without any notifications or update prompts.

Like worse threats such as Bitcoin-mining Trojans, Epic Scale's use of resources provides relatively visible symptoms. These symptoms may include unusual resource statistics (easily viewable from your Windows Task Manager), excessive system heat and, occasionally, poor software or hardware performance. In worst case scenarios, the latter symptom may include crashes, program unresponsiveness or lag. Threats developed for similar purposes as Epic Scale miners also have reputations for shortening the lifespans of affected hardware, although malware researchers have seen no reports of such damages arising from the default use of Epic Scale.

Scaling an Epic Problem Down to a Manageable Size

Epic Scale doesn't try to conceal any of its components or block its deletion, which is why malware experts classify Epic Scale as a Potentially Unwanted Program, or a PUP. In spite of that, some PC security companies have designated Epic Scale as a Trojan or 'riskware,' due to its nigh-identical features shared with illegitimate forms of cryptocurrency miners. Regardless of its supposed charitable aspirations, Epic Scale should be considered for removal or persistence on a basis of how its primary features interfere with your standard PC usage.

While deleting Epic Scale doesn't necessarily require the use of dedicated security tools, such tools may provide assistance with guaranteeing its complete removal, in light of recent user reports. Malware experts also can strongly endorse scanning third-party installers that could bundle Epic Scale with themselves, or, most efficiently, avoiding uTorrent updates until this scandal finds a resolution to the satisfaction of all parties.

Technical Details

File System Modifications

Tutorials: If you wish to learn how to remove malware components manually, you can read the tutorials on how to find malware, kill unwanted processes, remove malicious DLLs and delete other harmful files. Always be sure to back up your PC before making any changes.

The following files were created in the system:

%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\EpicScale\7\EpicScale.exe

File name: EpicScale.exe
Size: 339.44 KB (339440 bytes)
MD5: 023961a32ed7b17c4f6716b06e264075
Detection count: 38
File type: Executable File
Mime Type: unknown/exe
Path: %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\EpicScale\7
Group: Malware file
Last Updated: April 10, 2015

Registry Modifications

The following newly produced Registry Values are:

Regexp file mask%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\EPIC_SCALE.lnkHKEY..\..\..\..{RegistryKeys}Software\EpicScaleSoftware\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\StartPage\NewShortcuts\C:\Users\user\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\EPIC_SCALE.lnkSoftware\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\EpicScale

Additional Information

The following directories were created:

%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\EpicScale