Acnom.exe process belongs to a harmful application that can properly be identified as a coin miner trojan. That malware type uses your hardware to mine cryptocurrencies, basically – Monero or DarkCoin1. It makes your computer almost unfunctional due to high CPU use.
What is Acnom.exe process?
Acnom.exe is a malicious process created by coin miner virus
Acnom.exe – Very high CPU/GPU usage
Besides CPU consumption, some of the coin miners also utilize GPU power for their tasks. In that case, you will likely struggle even to see the mouse arrow moving – GPU is often utilized on 100%. It is not as critical as processor for system work, so Acnom.exe coin miner viruses don’t waste time on trifles and utilize it all. It sometimes may cause sad results.
Shortly about cryptocurrency mining
List of the typical coin miner symptoms
How dangerous is the Acnom.exe miner?
Coin miners does not deal damage to your files. However, they make a lot of unpleasant things with the whole system
First off, Acnom.exe virus makes your system overloaded. It is unable to run your applications now, because all processor power is used by a malware. That malware does not care for your necessities, all it pays attention to is generating income on you. Even if you are patient, and you waited until web browser is open, you will likely experience incredibly sluggish performance. Pages will open for years, any kind of logins will likely take about a minute – just a headache for a person that works online.
Acnom.exe Technical Summary.
| File Name | Acnom.exe |
| Type | Trojan Coin Miner |
| Detection Name | Trojan:Win32/CoinMiner |
| Distribution Method | Software bundling, Intrusive advertisement, redirects to shady sites etc. |
| Similar behavior | Dhcpsvchostdllcommon.exe, Microsoftconhost.exe, Temp.working |
| Removal | Download and install GridinSoft Anti-Malware for automatic Acnom.exe removal. |
“Visible” harm is not a single bad activity coin miners perform to your computer. Acnom.exe coin miner also deals damage to your operating system. To execute all malicious operations properly, it wrecks the protection mechanisms of your system. You will likely see your Microsoft Defender disabled – malware halts it to prevent detection. If you open the HOSTS file, you will likely see a lot of new entries – they are added by this trojan miner to connect your system to a malicious cryptomining network. All these changes are about to be gone back to the original in the process of computer recovery.
Hardware effects of coin miner activity
Besides decreasing your system’s performance, performing at peak level for a long period of time can trigger damage to your machine and raise power expenses. Hardware elements are designed to easily deal with high load, but they can do so only in case when they are in a good shape.
Tiny and well-protected CPU cooling system is quite hard to crack. Meanwhile, GPUs have big and easy-to-access fans, which can be easily cracked if affected while working, for instance, by the user much before the virus injection. Malfunctioning cooling system, together with the extremely high load caused by Acnom.exe miner can easily lead to GPU failure3. Video cards are also tend to have increased wearing when utilized for crypto mining. It is surely a bad case when the performance of your video card decreases on 20-30% just after several weeks of being exploited in such a way.
How did I get Acnom.exe coin miner virus?
Coin miners are spread through different ways, but their main sources are malicious banners and programs from dubious sources
The example of malicious banners you can see in the Internet
An additional way you could get this item on your PC is by downloading it from the unreliable website as a part of a program. Users who spread hacked versions of favored programs (which do not demand the license key) have small chances to earn money. Therefore, there is a very big lure to add malware to the final package of the hacked app and acquire a coin for every installation. Before criticizing these people for hacking and also malware spreading, ask yourself – is it okay to avoid paying for the program in such a way? It is more affordable to pay $20-$30 at once than to pay a much greater sum for antivirus software as well as new parts for your PC.
How to remove the Acnom.exe miner from my PC?
The best way to get rid of this coin miner virus is to use anti-malware software
Booting the PC into Safe Mode with Networking
Press the Start button, then choose Power, and click on Reboot while holding the Shift key on the keyboard.
Windows will reboot into recovery mode. In that mode, choose Troubleshoot→ Startup Settings→ Safe Mode with Networking. Press the corresponding button on your keyboard to choose that option.
When your system is in Safe Mode, all third-party software, just like the majority of non-critical operating system components, are not started with the system start. That allows you to clean the system without dealing with high processor usage of the coin miner.
References
- Read about why Monero and DarkCoin are so popular amongst cybercriminals.
- About unwanted effects for GPUs in the process of cryptomining.
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