What Is Hidden Mining, Why Is It Dangerous and How to Delete the Virus?

It often happens that when a new method of earning arises, some people begin to create dishonest schemes for its use. Today we will talk about such a concept as hidden

mining

. In this article you will learn how the intruders take possession of the computing power of unsuspecting people. We'll figure out how to test your computer for such mining viruses and delete them without consequences for your own equipment. So, let's talk about everything step-by-step.

Contents:

(please, click the topic to scroll down to it)

1. What is hidden mining?

Scammers can hide the mining virus in any file, up to a torrent, a document or a picture. Getting into the system, the miner bot is installed in the hidden mode and disguised as the Windows registry, so it can remain unnoticed for a long time.

2. The principle of hidden mining

We have already explained how to hide the mining virus, it is time to talk about the basic principles of its work. By infecting a computer, this virus gets access to the processing power of its CPU. After that, it connects to a certain mining pool, which is engaged in cryptocurrency mining using processors. This mining brings a penny from one computer, so the main purpose of scammers is to infect as many devices as possible.

You might have guessed that all the mined money goes straight to the

wallets

of attackers. Bots can be different, more complex ones can monitor CPU overloads and make adjustments to their work based on this data. That is, if the virus sees that the computer is overloaded, then it turns off the mining so as not to attract unnecessary attention. Some versions of viruses have an additional clone of the source file, which will automatically restore it after uninstallation.

3. How to find and delete the shady mining virus from your PC?

If your computer starts freezing for no reason, although you do not perform any power-consuming tasks, it is already a bad sign that it can be infected with a hidden mining virus. So how do you find the hidden miner? You need to carry out a number of actions:

Test the operation of the device during the execution of simple tasks; Open more complex programs, such as games; Run a load test of the graphics card and CPU during operation and after closing background applications; Analyze the indicators in all of the above loads.

If you find inconsistencies in the system performance report during the above-mentioned tests, then it is likely that your computer is infected with a hidden mining virus.

The next logical step will be to delete it, but this process is not as simple as it may seem at first glance. The fact is that scammers are working every year to improve the algorithms for bypassing the security system of antivirus programs. Thus, the deletion of the bot-miner should be approached with all responsibility. So, how do you delete it?

First, backup all of your important files to an external storage device. It is very important, do not make a full backup of the files, as in this case you will transfer a virus file as well. Next, install a fresh update of the antivirus software. Additionally, you can install the program CCleaner, it works well in tandem with the antivirus and will increase the chances of completely removing the "program metastases" of the miner. Before you perform a search on the mining virus, close all applications that run in the background. This is necessary in order to make it easier to recognize malicious software, as it is often masked by the standard processes of the system. Get rid of all programs or games that were downloaded from questionable sites. After that, run a deep scan of the system for viruses and study all the processes in the task manager, if any of them loads the processor more than 15-20%, then most likely it is the hidden miner. More complex miners are not displayed in the task manager, and you will need to download and install a special plugin that neutralizes spyware in automatic mode to get rid of it, for example, Malwarebytes Anti-Malware, CurelT, etc. If nothing helps, you should perform a full formatting of the hard disk and reinstall the operating system.

4. Conclusion

Many scammers use special viruses in order to use the computing power of multiple computers and mine cryptocurrency in such a way. This leads to inconveniences during the use of a PC, because the system does not work properly. In this article, we learned how to detect a hidden miner on your computer and get rid of it once and for all.

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