Coin-miner.exe Virus (Coin Miner Trojan) Removal

Coin-miner.exe process comes from a harmful application that can correctly be identified as a coin miner virus. That malware form utilizes your PC components to mine cryptocurrencies, generally – Monero or DarkCoin1. It makes your computer roughly unusable as a result of high CPU use.

What is Coin-miner.exe process?

Coin-miner.exe is a malicious process created by coin miner virus
Coin-miner.exe Windows Process

Coin-miner.exe – Extremely high CPU/GPU usage

Besides CPU consumption, some of the coin miners additionally utilize GPU power for their operations. In that instance, you will probably struggle also to see the mouse cursor moving – GPU is often utilized on 100%. It is not as essential as CPU for system work, so Coin-miner.exe coin miner viruses don’t waste time on trifles and utilize all of it. It sometimes may lead to unhappy results.

Shortly about cryptocurrency mining

List of the typical coin miner symptoms

  • Microsoft Defender is stopped;
  • CPU and GPU is loaded at 80-90% exactly after the system start
  • Cooling fans are running at high speed and create a lot of noise
  • A single process in Task Manager consumes all CPU and GPU power
  • How dangerous is the Coin-miner.exe miner?

    Coin miners does not deal damage to your files. However, they make a lot of unpleasant things with the whole system

    Initially, Coin-miner.exe virus makes your system overloaded. It is not able to run your applications now, because all CPU power is consumed by a virus. That malware does not care for your needs, all it pays attention to is generating profits on you. Even if you are patient, and you waited until web browser is open, you will likely suffer from exceptionally sluggish performance. Pages can open up for years, any type of logins will likely take about a minute – just a nightmare for a person who works online.

    Coin-miner.exe Technical Summary.

    File Name Coin-miner.exe
    Type Trojan Coin Miner
    Detection Name Trojan:Win32/CoinMiner
    Distribution Method Software bundling, Intrusive advertisement, redirects to shady sites etc.
    Similar behavior Csrsc.exe, Etcv2.exe, Tha.exe
    Removal Download and install GridinSoft Anti-Malware for automatic Coin-miner.exe removal.

    “Visible” damage is not a single unpleasant activity coin miners do to your PC. Coin-miner.exe coin miner also deals damage to your operating system. To execute all malicious operations successfully, it ruins the protection components of your system. You will likely see your Microsoft Defender disabled – malware halts it to avoid detection. If you open the HOSTS file, you will likely see a lot of new notes – they are added by this trojan miner to connect your computer to a malicious cryptomining network. All these adjustments are about to be reverted to the initial state in the process of system recovery.

    Hardware effects of coin miner activity

    Besides making your computer slow, running at peak level for long times may cause damage to your device as well as increase electricity expenses. PC components are designed to easily get along with high load, but they can do so only in case when they are in a good shape.

    Little and well-protected CPU fan is hard to broke. Meanwhile, graphic cards have big and easy-to-access fans, which can be easily broke if touched while running, for instance, by the user much before the virus injection. Malfunctioning cooling system, together with the really high load caused by Coin-miner.exe malware can easily lead to graphic processing unit failure3. GPUs are also tend to have very fast wearing when utilized for crypto mining. It is surely an undesirable case when the performance of your graphic card decreases on 20-30% just after 1-2 weeks of being exploited in such a way.

    How did I get Coin-miner.exe coin miner virus?

    Coin miners are spread through different ways, but their main sources are malicious banners and programs from dubious sources
    Unwanted banners adware

    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 variants of well-known programs (which do not need the license key) have small chances to make money. Hence, there is a huge lure to add in malware to the final package of the hacked application and receive a coin for each setup. Prior to blaming these people for hacking and also malware distribution, 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 program and new parts for your PC.

    How to remove the Coin-miner.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.

    Boot into Windows Safe Mode

    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.

    windows safe mode boot option with command prompt

    When your computer is in Safe Mode, all third-party programs, along with the majority of non-critical operating system components, are not launched with the system start. That gives you the ability to clean the PC without dealing with high CPU usage of the coin miner.

    References

    1. Read about why Monero and DarkCoin are so popular amongst cybercriminals.
    2. About unwanted effects for GPUs in the process of cryptomining.

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    About the author

    Robert Bailey

    Security engineer focused on malware behavior, removal workflows, and Windows hardening. Robert reviews threat articles for practical accuracy, checking detection names, symptoms, and cleanup steps before publication.

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