Bitcoin Miner Virus – How to Detect & Remove It [Free Guide]

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What Is Bitcoin Miner Virus?

As ransomware attacks become more frequent than ever, making the crypto price to rise, the need for a Bitcoin miner virus also increases. Virus actors try to implement crypto infection into everything they do, be it backdoors, viruses, ransomware, adware and redirects.

BitCoin miner virus also known as Trojan.MacOS.BitCoinMiner.EB is a dangerous infection that may use your CPU and/or GPU to obtain crypto cryptocurrency illegally. Cryptocurrency miners keep hitting computers and trying to use their resources to generate revenue for their developers. Even though this type of infection is called BitCoinMiner, it does mine for digital currencies such as Monero, Electroneum, and others.

Since crypto-mining is a process that requires extremely powerful hardware components, cybercriminals utilise malicious software that enables them to hijack users’ computers and use them to collectively mine cryptocurrencies. By doing this they avoid all expensive costs. Affected users, in return, start facing lots of problems with their computers.

How to Know If You Have a Trojan.Bitcoinminer

This type of infection can hardly be noticed as it does not open any windows. It is just silently running in the background of all other active processes. If you want to detect a such an infection you should open the task manager and look for any unknown processes. In addition, pay attention to the following symptoms:

• In the Task Manager you see more than 50% CPU utilization all the time.

• Programs load slow.

• Programs become unresponsive.

• The computer starts to freeze.

• Sudden reboots occur and prevent you from saving your data.

• The machine generates excessive heat.

• Games run slower.

Here are some of the detection names given to such crypto malware:

PUA.CoinMiner
Trojan.BitMine
Riskware.BitcoinMiner
W32/CoinMiner
Application.BitCoinMiner
Trojan.BtcMine
Riskware.Miner
Win.Trojan.Bitcoinminer-72

If you believe you are infected with this crypto obtaining viruses, we advise you to read this article to learn how to remove it from your computer and protect yourself in the future as well.

Such infections are shaping up to be the next big thing in cyber-security, and it will not go away soon. One such virus is the latest discovered infection. This infection has the only purpose to mine Monero, Ethereum, Dashcoin, or other cryptocurrencies on the computer it has infected.

For cryptocurrency mining to occur, the BitCoin infection may run processes on the infected machine that may result in the significant over-usage of its CPU and GPU resources. This, in turn, sometimes leads to a total slowing down of the system. And the worst part is that there are no files on your computer, meaning it is very difficult to detect it.

We have detected a lot of new crypto obtaining threats out there with different capabilities. Some such viruses were as harmless as to only mine your PC, while others, hastier were completely able to display ads and also infect your PC with information-stealing infection that directly provides your data to cybercriminals.

The malicious activity of the infection is comprised of executing multiple malicious scripts on the infected PC by a backdoor and remote code execution which the infection runs beforehand. These scripts have the purpose to connect the threat to a control and command server. It the mining infection uses different classes to execute further scripts that allow for various actions to take place:

• Remove control of the virus.

• Download the cryptocurrency mining software and execute it filelessly.

• Add the victim PC to a mining pool network in which all infected computers are also added.

In some cases the infection process is conducted with the aid of one of the zero-day or other exploits used in the WannaCry and NotPetya ransomware outbreaks which came out earlier this year. The exploit is known by the name EternalBlue and is a zero-day type of exploit for Windows versions from Windows XP up to Windows 10. Fortunately, Microsoft has released patches for the exploit, so anyone who has a legitimate Windows installation should immediately:

• Disable the WMI service.

• Disable SMB and Download the latest security patches from Microsoft.

Some crypto threats that are misusing the Windows Management Instrumentation service (WMI) – scrcons.exe, to execute malicious scripts. As a result, the miner becomes completely invisible, because it does not drop any types of files on the computers infected by it.

Such threats have continued to evolve adding new technologies to them that enable them to not only act as a Worm to infect as many computers as possible but also to use the infected machine to its full extent and clear example for that is the WannaMine Cryptoworm infection, imitating the notorious WannaCry ransomware. And with Bitcoin price scoring a high-level price in August 2020 we could expect new mining viruses and improved versions of existing ones to be released in the wild.

Besides this the usage of JavaScript has further evolved and become more sophisticated with RAT features in some viruses, like the Webmine.pro JavaScript miner. In addition to this, viruses have begin to imimtate system processes very well.

Happily, Google Chrome which is the most widely used web browser has been updated to block the web browser extensions that have JavaScript mining codes in them. This means that Google Chrome is more secure against miners and it is recommended that you use it, if you have recently had problems caused by such extensions. Note that this move by Google does not eliminate such viruses since they are still very active via Trojan Horses and on other browsers’ extensions as well. Furthermore, CryptoCurrency mining viruses are still evolving and some of them are now capable of acting on themselves.

Here are some of the most notorious crypto threats which have made the most impact out of all:

• Service_box.exe

• RevServicesXapp_loader.exe

• Valhalla

• Debug.exe

• WaterMiner

• Miner.exe

• JS:Cryptonight

• Moloko Trojan

• Auto Refresh Plus Adware

• Harvest

• Android Mobile

• Svchost.exe

• Brocoiner Coinhive

• Websock.exe

• Digmine Facebook Messenger

• CPU Miner (gw64.exe)

• CCminer.exe

• SiaCoin

• Bitcoinminer.sx

• Upup.exe

• WDF.EXE CryptoMiner Trojan

One of the latest crypto-mining cases reported regards the legitimate Synapse X program. An executable file called Synapse X.exe has been spotted to be acting oddly on computer systems by occupying more than 90% of the CPU/GPU usage for a long period of time. This, in turn, means that the process may be misused by malicious actors to abuse victims’ computer resources in order to transfer Dash, Monero, or another cryptocurrency directly to cybercriminals’ wallets.

How is BitCoin Infection Installed on a Computer?

At this point, it is not clear as to what the exact infection method of this mining malware is. However, it may appear on your computer as a result of executing multiple different types of miners previously executed on your computers, such as Trojans, Worms, and others. The methods of distribution and infection vary, but they may be conducted via:

• Malicious web links posted as a spam message online.

• Web links that exist In various forms, as fake buttons or altered banners on a website as a result of having a PUP on your computer.

• Via malicious e-mail spam attachment with a convincing message to open it.

As of recent months, new crypto miners have emerged out in the wild. The viruses are spread via multiple different methods. It is most likely that they are embedded on websites via malicious JavaScript code on the websites visited by victims.

BitCoin Miner Virus on Mac

Such threats have started to spread across various devices, including Macs, hence they are also referred to as Crypto Miner Mac threats. Some of the most recent Mac threats that perform cryptocurrency mining activities have been reported to be the following:

• OSX.CoinMiner Virus

• MacOS-AS

• Creative Update Mac

Mining infection is more widespread on Mac systems according to malware researchers and the recent AV-TEST. The reason behind it is that some of the higher-end Mac machines are equipped with powerful hardware, which the miners want to use the resources of, to mine for digital currency since last year.

More than 1,305 malware samples of the crypto mining on Mac category were detected by AV-TEST. Trojans and other threats, different from the malware showed fewer results in the samples infecting Apple computer systems.