How to remove a Trojan.BitCoinMiner Miner Infection

A Trojan.BitCoinMiner is a computer infection that silently runs on your computer while using your CPU or GPU resources to mine for digital currencies. As the value of cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, rise, more and more criminals want to use your computer’s resources to mine for them and generate revenue.

While this type of infection may be called BitCoinMiner, it does not mean that criminals are only mining for Bitcoins. They are also mining for digital currencies such as Monero, Electroneum, and others.

What is particularly worrisome about this infection is that it will use your CPU and graphics card for long periods of time at high intensity. This causes your devices to get very hot for a long period of time, which cause damage to the hardware in your computer. This prolonged use also causes your computer to use more electricity than normal, which could increase electric bills.

BitcoinMiners are also detected under different names such as:

PUA.CoinMiner
Trojan.BitMine
W32/CoinMiner
Trojan.BitMine
Application.BitCoinMiner
Riskware.BitcoinMiner
Riskware.Miner

Symptoms of a Trojan.BitCoinMiner Infection

As Trojan.BitCoinMiner’s do not display a window and silently run in the background, many people do not even know that they are infected. The only real way to detect a Trojan.BitCoinMiner is to become suspicious based on the following symptoms and start looking in task manager for unknown processes.

These symptoms are:

• You will see a processes running in task manager that are using over 50% of the CPU for a long period of time.
• You will see processes in task manager that have a name like XMRig.
• Windows minimize and maximize slowly, games run slower, and videos stutter.
• Programs don’t launch as quickly.
• Programs become unresponsive.
• Task Manager shows greater than 50% CPU utilization all the time.
• General slowness when using the computer.

Unfortunately, if you are infected with a miner that uses your GPU, or graphics card, you will probably not see any processes in task manager utilizing a large amount of CPU. This is because the processing is done on the graphics card instead.

If you suspect that you are infected with a Miner that is utilizing your graphics card, you can download GPU-Z and check the GPU load while you are not playing any games or doing any graphics intensive activities. If your card has a high GPU load for no reason, then its possible your infected with a GPU miner.

How is a Trojan.BitCoinMiner installed on a Computer?

Trojan.BitCoinMiner infections can be installed on your computer using a variety of methods. The most common method is for it to be installed by other Trojans that are on your computer. These Trojans will download and install the program without your knowledge.

Another method is through the installation of adware bundles that also install a miner on the computer. Therefore it is important that you stay away from software cracks and pay close attention to installation prompts when installing free software that you download from the Internet.

As you can see, a Miner infection is not something you want on your computer. These infections steal your computer’s CPU resources, GPU resources, and your electricity in order to generate profit. In order to make a computer operate normally again and protect the computer’s hardware, you can use the guide below to scan for and remove any Trojan.BitCoinMiner’s that it detects.