Shadowsocks Miner Trojan

Posted: October 10, 2017

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.

Ranking:	9,353
Threat Level:	9/10
Infected PCs:	1,040

First Seen:	October 10, 2017
Last Seen:	October 14, 2023
OS(es) Affected:	Windows

Cyber crooks have been using stealthy crypto-currency mining tools for a while now since this is a very subtle and, at first glance, harmless method to exploit the computers of their victims to make money. While CPU and GPU miners are harmless essentially, their presence on a computer is likely to be accompanied by rather annoying side effects, which also might be accompanied by disappointing consequences in the long run. The short-term issues that a stealthy miner like the Shadowsocks Miner Trojan may cause are:

High CPU utilization by the miner itself.
High CPU temperatures, which might shorten the lifespan of the processor in the long run.
Due to the excessive use of CPU resources, the victim might encounter slow performance, crashing software, and other system stability issues.
Older PCs might crash completely due to the high load of the tasks that the Shadowsocks Miner Trojan executes.

The miner, despite its name, is not associated with a legitimate online proxy and VPN service, which goes by the name Shadowsocks. However, it seems that the authors of the dubious miner Trojan have opted to use this name to disguise the majority of their files and processes, therefore making users think that they are running an entirely different piece of software.

When the Shadowsocks Miner Trojan is deployed to a computer, it will create files and Registry keys whose purpose is to ensure that the Trojan will start when Windows boots, therefore guaranteeing that the Trojan will run at all times. Some of the process and filenames that the Shadowsocks Miner Trojan might hide behind are 'Service.exe' and 'websock.exe.' In addition to this, the dubious Trojan creates an uninstall entry in the Windows Control Panel under the name 'Shadowsocks version 1.0.' However, we don't advise users affected by the miner to complete its uninstallation from there. The best thing to do when dealing with such software is to use an up-to-date anti-virus utility, which can guarantee the threat's full removal.

Shadowsocks Miner Trojan

Threat Metric

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