Win32/Bitcoinminer.AF

Win32/Bitcoinminer.AF is a Trojan that generates Bitcoin digital currency for criminals – while degrading your system performance in the process. Because Win32/Bitcoinminer.AF often is associated with other Trojans less specialized than itself and can harm your PC's hardware permanently, a rapid response to Win32/Bitcoinminer.AF is a paramount security concern. Anti-malware products with updated databases, preferably supported by other security features, should be used for removing Win32/Bitcoinminer.AF, which may do its best to prevent itself from being uninstalled (or even found).

The Miner Whose Pickaxe is Headed for Your CPU

Win32/Bitcoinminer.AF is one of the many Bitcoin-mining Trojans that could have served useful, harmless lives as benign applications, but, instead, have been re-purposed to exploit vulnerable PCs. As a generator of a currency that requires extensive CPU or GPU investment for verification, Win32/Bitcoinminer.AF inherently uses up significant system resources. System slowdowns often are noticed as direct results of Win32/Bitcoinminer.AF's background Bitcoin-generating functions, although Win32/Bitcoinminer.AF also may be programmed to function only while the user is away from the computer.

Malware researchers often see Win32/Bitcoinminer.AF and other threatening Bitcoin miners being installed by Trojan downloaders, backdoor Trojans and some variants of rootkits. Rare cases of Bitcoin miners even have been found seeded in some legitimate products, such as the ESEA gaming client. Because Win32/Bitcoinminer.AF serves a specialized purpose, Win32/Bitcoinminer.AF can't enable other attacks against your computer, but its functions may cause significant and possibly permanent damage to the underlying hardware.

Keeping Your Hard Drive from Being Win32/Bitcoinminer.AF's Gold Mine

Most Win32/Bitcoinminer.AF infections should be easy to detect through their symptoms. However, other Trojans related to Win32/Bitcoinminer.AF attacks may not show any symptoms of their own, and anti-malware products should pick up the slack for detecting any possible related unsafe software. Win32/Bitcoinminer.AF and all threats associated with Win32/Bitcoinminer.AF are to be considered high-level threats to the very foundational integrity of your PC, and may include other attacks, such as the theft of bank account data or backdoor exploits.

However, there also are limits to how much damage Win32/Bitcoinminer.AF may do within a given time frame. Deleting Win32/Bitcoinminer.AF quickly and making sure that Win32/Bitcoinminer.AF is deleted through good anti-malware security should prevent any chance of Win32/Bitcoinminer.AF damaging your PC in the long run.

As examples of the possible dangers involved with Win32/Bitcoinminer.AF, some other PC threats known to be tied to Bitcoin miners include Win32/Kexqoud, PWS:Win32/Fareit.A (and other variants of Fareit), the Trojan dropper Trojan.Win32.Jorik.IRCbot.xkt and many members of the Sirefef family. Failing to catch and delete any of these PC threats in due time may cause other problems for your computer, which may remain compromised in the meantime.

Win32/Bitcoinminer.AF is designed for Windows, but Mac users shouldn't let down their guards; malware experts also have seen attacks against Mac OSes using similar Bitcoin miner Trojans to Win32/Bitcoinminer.AF.