Bitcoin and cryptocurrency mining virus

[nazrul76]

How to detect it and protect it?   

[White Christmas]

Actually there are some software for mining that has a virus in which it will detect by your antivirus and you must need to turn off your anti virus in order to start the software but it is risky because your computer may have the virus that the anti virus has been detect so it would be better if you will ask first some friends on what they in order to install safely their mining software and what terms of agreement they have sign into.

[joniboini]

Check your CPU & RAM access, take a look at the network activity & process that's running on your PC. That's how most diagnostics work. Other than that, use an antimalware or antivirus with the latest update to find malicious files on your computer.

Protecting yourself from viruses like that is easier said than done. But, most likely you're safe if you don't click a malicious link, download malicious website, using many flash disk/external drive that goes everywhere, etc.

[pooya87]

step 0 is prevention:
- never download or install shady binaries that you don't know the source of and don't trust.
- always make sure you have real software by verifying their digital signature if possible
- if you have to run a shady application then use a sandbox so that in case it contained anything malicious it wouldn't infect your computer.
- never visit shady website
- and as the last line of defense if you are on a closed source OS such as Windows or Mac you can install a good anti virus.

if you are already infected
best solution would be formatting the hard disk and reinstalling the OS but since that is hard you can install a good anti virus or use a rescue disk to scan and try to remove it.
detecting this type of malware is easy since they have to use excessive amount of computing power so the symptoms are obviously increased CPU or GPU usage, hearing the fan sound (if your fan speed is adjusted according to usage),...

[mk4]

Pretty easy to detect to be honest. Just doing some casual browsing on a few non resource heavy websites and suddenly your computer/laptop's fan is going ham like it was some helicopter or something even though you're sure that you aren't installing/updating something, then there's chance that your device is infected.

As for protection, well, in summary just don't be stupid or careless. That's pretty much it. Also, update your OS to get the security updates.

[avikz]

How to detect it and protect it?   

How to detect:
1. Check resource allocation using task manager. Identify any unknown program using high resources. It's a manual process.
2. Buy a licensed version of nternet security package which contains anti virus, anti malware/spyware and live internet usage. It's automated and easy. Don't rely on free to download antivirus softwares

How to protect:
1. Check point no 2 above.
2. Don't download random softwares from the web.
3. Strictly don't use any torrent related websites

I think you will do just great if you follow these instructions.

[BlackFor3st]

How to detect it and protect it?   

It is very difficult to detect the virus especially if it was being hidden by the mining software that you have downloaded. Antivirus is your only option to detect them so it will be best if you will install the top ranking antivirus in order to lessen the chance of any virus to bypass it.

Aside from it, it will be best also if you will download the mining software that were being used by many so you can assure that it was tested already and there are no virus inside your download.

[davis196]

Mining Bitcoins with a PC is absurd.You will get a few cents,if you are mining 365 days 24/7 (if electricity costs are zero).Do you mean the ransomeware virus that blocks your PC and asks to bitcoin payments?
The guys mentioned how to protect yourself in the previous posts,but I can share my personal experience.
I'm using Malwarebytes anti-malware software and I'm scanning my PC every once and a while.
When I'm browsing,I use a handy little software called Sandboxie to protect my PC from spreading the virus  across all system files and libraries.It keeps the malicious files inside a sandbox,so I can delete them later.

[figmentofmyass]

Mining Bitcoins with a PC is absurd.You will get a few cents,if you are mining 365 days 24/7 (if electricity costs are zero).Do you mean the ransomeware virus that blocks your PC and asks to bitcoin payments?

multiply that by several hundred thousand machines, and a single botnet could mine millions of dollars worth of monero. that's the usual scheme. https://www.zdnet.com/article/a-giant-botnet-is-forcing-windows-servers-to-mine-cryptocurrency/

[sheenshane]

I still remember the days where our network had trouble with internet connections. We checked our neighbor's if they had the same problem but it turned out that we were the only ones who were experiencing the problem. Our computers were not able to detect the mining virus. It was just sad to tell that if people with no technical knowledge could encounter these things, they wouldn't notice that someone is actually using their internet and computer without their permission.

The solution for this is to find the root of this scheme. The authorities must find the person or group who operates these kinds of software and take them to jail. As a miner, you should always have virus protection software. Anyway, I have found an interesting online article that relates to How to Detect and Remove the BitCoin Miner Virus, read the content it is knowledgeable to know.

[mk4]

It is very difficult to detect the virus especially if it was being hidden by the mining software that you have downloaded. Antivirus is your only option to detect them so it will be best if you will install the top ranking antivirus in order to lessen the chance of any virus to bypass it.

It is, actually. Remember that we're specifically talking about mining here. It's easily easily noticeable if your device is unusually using up too much unnecessary power especially if you aren't even doing anything that resource-heavy.

[YuginKadoya]

It is very difficult to detect the virus especially if it was being hidden by the mining software that you have downloaded. Antivirus is your only option to detect them so it will be best if you will install the top ranking antivirus in order to lessen the chance of any virus to bypass it.

It is, actually. Remember that we're specifically talking about mining here. It's easily easily noticeable if your device is unusually using up too much unnecessary power especially if you aren't even doing anything that resource-heavy.

It would surely use more than 70% of your CPU's power and graphic cards power because the virus is taking your computer's resources for themselves this kind of problem is a common issue regarding what does the virus does to your computer, and surely prevention is better than cure but what if it bypasses that prevention most of us are talking about, I think this kind of Virus can be removed by Malwarebytes, you can surely double-check it just to be sure and you can even reset your browser in a default settings as well.

[Mahanton]

How to detect it and protect it?   

Dont wait for you to get infected with any other viruses or malwares on your pc.All things would depend on how you do prevent it on the first place.
Dont click any links or download without knowing its source.

How to detect it? Usually your AV would able to detect such thing but we know that there were viruses/malwares which cant be detected.
Take that advise given by Omega above when it comes on network activity and processes yet you would able to detect it out if something is suspicious.

[mk4]

It would surely use more than 70% of your CPU's power and graphic cards power because the virus is taking your computer's resources for themselves this kind of problem is a common issue regarding what does the virus does to your computer, and surely prevention is better than cure but what if it bypasses that prevention most of us are talking about, I think this kind of Virus can be removed by Malwarebytes, you can surely double-check it just to be sure and you can even reset your browser in a default settings as well.

Yeap. Mining is pretty much easily noticeable probably besides rare cases when the hacker uses only like 10% which is unlikely I think. As for such viruses being easily removed through software like Malwarebytes, sure it can. But I'm more of a reinstall-the-OS-instead guy, just to be completely sure.

Also dudes and dudettes, Linux!

[YuginKadoya]

It would surely use more than 70% of your CPU's power and graphic cards power because the virus is taking your computer's resources for themselves this kind of problem is a common issue regarding what does the virus does to your computer, and surely prevention is better than cure but what if it bypasses that prevention most of us are talking about, I think this kind of Virus can be removed by Malwarebytes, you can surely double-check it just to be sure and you can even reset your browser in a default settings as well.

Yeap. Mining is pretty much easily noticeable probably besides rare cases when the hacker uses only like 10% which is unlikely I think. As for such viruses being easily removed through software like Malwarebytes, sure it can. But I'm more of a reinstall-the-OS-instead guy, just to be completely sure.

Also dudes and dudettes, Linux!

Yes! that is also a pretty sure thing to really do, to simply be just in the safe side of things, Maybe formatting and reinstalling all programs and algorithm that will be needed in the mining process, and just like Pooya87 have said

- never download or install shady binaries that you don't know the source of and don't trust.

Always thing first that prevention is better, and be careful in using it again in the same way you did back then.

[alexsandria]

Pretty easy to detect to be honest. Just doing some casual browsing on a few non resource heavy websites and suddenly your computer/laptop's fan is going ham like it was some helicopter or something even though you're sure that you aren't installing/updating something, then there's chance that your device is infected.

As for protection, well, in summary just don't be stupid or careless. That's pretty much it. Also, update your OS to get the security updates.

The best thing to do is to just update your OS regularly and your windows defender and also include your anti virus for your laptop or computer's safety measures. If you are careful on browsing different sites and downloading different files in the internet you will not be able to have any virus on your laptop or computer so just be careful on accessing different platforms in order to avoid viruses. Just like what I have been said the most and prettiest thing to do is to always keep updated your OS and anti virus.

[Kurokonobasuke]

It is difficult to detect the crypto mining virus because it might be hiding themselves. But the best way to prevent ourselves on from the mining virus. I would like to share my knowledge on how we prevent crypto virus. The first thing that we need to do is to install and always check update for the security like an antivirus software, regularly check your programs every time if there's an suspicious virus. Second is keep the OS is up to date, because it always a new feature to defend antivirus. That's the basic step that I shared on how to prevent mining virus.

[seoincorporation]

it could be hard to identify this malware by the resources because when we configure cpuminer (the software for mining used as malware) we can select the % of the CPU to use, so, if the marlware only use 10% of our CPU then we will not see a big change in the system resources.

The best option is to backup and format. But i was thinking we could block some ports in the firewall to avoid the connections to mining pools. I'm not sure if this would really work but at least the hacker will not get a recompense this way.

[mk4]

The best thing to do is to just update your OS regularly and your windows defender and also include your anti virus for your laptop or computer's safety measures.

Tbh you don't even need to install any other 3rd party antivirus software. Windows defender should be enough. Personally had a Windows device for a decade without any other active antivirus/antimalware software(besides Malwarebytes for my weekly scan), without a single problem. Probably 90% of the time, the security depends on the user not on the device itself.

[ranochigo]

I'm not sure why no one has mentioned it but:

It's not easy to actually detect mining virus. Unlike the wallet stealing malware which specifically actively looks out for any suspicious programs that seeks for wallet files, a mining virus is much harder to detect in the sense that they can attempt to conceal their activities within a legitimate program. For example, they can spawn a process that uses a high CPU resource and it still wouldn't be that suspicious since many programs has a high CPU utilisation.

It would take a reverse engineering of the program to determine if its a false positive or not.