Coinminer Trojan

Coinminer 

Coinminer is one of the worst types of malware that you can come across is what is known as Trojan Horse. Coinminer is currently on the rise and many users have become victims to it which is why we decided it is important that our readers are well informed with regards to this noxious malware threat.

The Coinminer Trojan

Now, we know that you have most likely heard about this highly dangerous category of PC viruses but are you aware of their actual characteristics – what they can do, how they are distributed and how one could handle such a threat?In case you want to learn more about any of those aspects, we advise you to read the paragraphs below as they will offer you some important information that you might want to know with regards to Trojans. The main reason we have written the current article is one recently reported Trojan called Coinminer – it is currently on the rise and many users have become victims to it which is why we decided it is important that our readers are well informed with regards to this noxious malware threat.

The Coinminer Trojan

You all know that Trojan Horses are very dangerous and have the potential to cause some pretty nasty problems to the computers they infect. However, what makes a Trojan like Coinminer so devastating?

For starters, you need to understand that malicious programs that fall under this malware group are very, very stealthy. Most users do not even realize that their computers have been compromised. In most cases, the best chance one would have at detecting a Trojan would be if they have a good antivirus that can spot the infection on time. However, even with a reliable antivirus, there’s still no guarantee that the threat would get detected.

Protection

The two most important rules when it comes to protecting your PC against any sort of malware are being careful online and having a reliable antivirus program. Therefore, if you want to keep your system safe and sound, make sure that you avoid any suspicious and shady-looking online content (sketchy ads, spam e-mails, questionable update requests, etc.) as well as stay away from sites with low or unknown reputation. Also, as we said above, having a strong security software is also very important so make sure to get that covered if you haven’t already done so.

Typically, the way a Trojan Horse infection occurs is when the user interacts with a file or some online element that carries the infection. Typically, the malware is disguised as something seemingly harmless – a file that you might think is a program or a legitimately-looking update request. Whatever the malware carrier is, hackers try to make it look as safe-looking as possible so that the victim could get tricked into opening it. Once the malicious element gets executed via an account on the computer that has Administrator privileges, the cyber-criminal who’s behind the attack would gain remote access to the targeted machine and would be able to put the Trojan Horse into use. What that use would actually be depends on the agenda of the hacker. Trojans typically can be re-programmed to serve multiple purposes and we cannot really say what such a malware would be used for if it has made it inside your PC. All we can do is give you a general idea regarding the most common ways in which such viruses get utilized.

Trojan Horse uses

Here are several examples of what a typical Trojan Horse program like Coinminer might be able to do. Keep in mind that those aren’t all possible uses that you can expect from such a virus but only the most common and likely ones:

• • System damage – Trojans can oftentimes cause severe damage to the system of your PC by corrupting important data and modifying the Registry. This could lead to crashes, freezes, Blue Screen of Death, slow-down and even to the inability of the PC to load Windows after a reboot.
  • Spying – some of those viruses are also capable of spying on their victims. In this case, your keystrokes might get recorded, screenshots might get taken from your screen and even your webcam might get used for stalking purposes.
  • Distribution of other malware – Trojans are also capable of loading other malware inside the infected machine. For instance, if Coinminer has infiltrated your computer, it might be used do download a Ransomware virus inside it which would then lock up your personal files and blackmail to pay a ransom in exchange for the access to the sealed data.
  • Mining and spam – in addition to all we mentioned already, a Trojan might also force your computer to use all of its RAM, CPU and maybe even GPU memory to mine for a certain cryptocurrency (BitCoin, Ethereum, Monero, etc.). Also, it is possible that your machine gets tasked with sending out spam messages to other unfortunate users.

SUMMARY:

Coinminer Trojan Removal

You are dealing with a malware infection that can restore itself unless you remove its core files. We are sending you to another page with a removal guide that gets regularly updated. It covers in-depth instructions on how to:
1. Locate and scan malicious processes in your task manager.
2. Identify in your Control panel any programs installed with the malware, and how to remove them. Search Marquis is a high-profile hijacker that gets installed with a lot of malware.
3. How to clean up and reset your browser to its original settings without the malware returning. You can find the removal guide here.

For mobile devices refer to these guides instead: Android, iPhone