Brave.exe process belongs to a malevolent program that can accurately be identified as a coin miner trojan virus. That malware form utilizes your hardware to mine cryptocurrencies, primarily – Monero or DarkCoin1. It makes your personal computer almost nonfunctional because of high CPU use.
What is Brave.exe process?
Brave.exe is a malicious process created by coin miner virus
Brave.exe – Really high CPU as well as GPU usage
Besides CPU usage, some of the coin miners additionally make use of GPU power for their operations. In that case, you will probably struggle even to see the mouse cursor moving – GPU is often used on 100%. It is not as critical as processor for system work, so Brave.exe coin miner viruses don’t waste time on trifles and use it all. It often can result in sad consequences.
Shortly about cryptocurrency mining
List of the typical coin miner symptoms
How dangerous is the Brave.exe miner?
Coin miners does not deal damage to your files. However, they make a lot of unpleasant things with the whole system
First of all, Brave.exe virus makes your computer overloaded. It is unable to run your applications now, since all CPU power is used by a malware. That malware does not care for your necessities, all it focuses on is generating income on you. Even if you are patient, and you waited until web browser is open, you will likely suffer from incredibly slow performance. Pages can open for years, any kind of logins will take about a minute – just a nightmare for a person that does a job online.
Brave.exe Technical Summary.
| File Name | Brave.exe |
| Type | Trojan Coin Miner |
| Detection Name | Trojan:Win32/CoinMiner |
| Distribution Method | Software bundling, Intrusive advertisement, redirects to shady sites etc. |
| Similar behavior | Rovwer.exe, Winring0x64.sys, Novpopen.exe |
| Removal | Download and install GridinSoft Anti-Malware for automatic Brave.exe removal. |
“Visible” harm is not a single bad activity coin miners do to your computer. Brave.exe coin miner also deals damage to your OS. To complete all malicious functions correctly, it wrecks the protection features of your system. You will likely see your Microsoft Defender disabled – malware stops it to prevent detection. If you open the HOSTS file, you will likely see a lot of new notes – they are brought in by this trojan miner to connect your computer to a malicious cryptomining network. All these changes shall be gone back to the original in the process of system recovery.
Hardware effects of coin miner activity
Besides decreasing your system’s performance, performing at peak power for a long period of time may cause damage to your device and increase electricity costs. PC components are designed to easily get along with high load, but they can do so only when they are in a good shape.
Little and well-protected processor fan is quite hard to broke. Meanwhile, GPUs have big and easy-to-access fans, which can be easily broke if touched while spinning, for instance, by the user much earlier before the virus injection. Malfunctioning cooling system, together with the unusually high load caused by Brave.exe virus can easily lead to graphic processing unit failure3. GPUs are also prone to have increased wearing when utilized for crypto mining. It is likely an undesirable case when the performance of your GPU decreases on 20-30% only after several weeks of being used in such a way.
How did I get Brave.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
Another way you could get this thing on your computer is by downloading it from the untrustworthy website as a part of a program. Users who spread hacked versions of well-known programs (which do not require the license key) have small chances to make money. For this reason, there is a huge lure to include malware to the final package of the hacked app and acquire a coin for each setup. Before blaming these individuals for hacking and also malware spreading, ask yourself – is it OK to avoid paying for the program in such a way? It is much cheaper to pay $20-$30 at once than to pay a much greater figure for antivirus program as well as new parts for your desktop.
How to remove the Brave.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 computer is in Safe Mode, all third-party apps, just like the majority of non-critical system components, are not launched with the system start. That allows you to clean the PC 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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