Cortana.exe process belongs to a malicious application that can correctly be recognized as a coin miner trojan virus. That malware form uses your hardware to mine cryptocurrencies, generally – Monero or DarkCoin1. It makes your computer almost unusable as a result of high CPU use.
What is Cortana.exe process?
Cortana.exe is a malicious process created by coin miner virus
Cortana.exe – Extremely high CPU and GPU use
Besides CPU usage, some of the coin miners additionally use GPU power for their operations. In that situation, you will likely struggle also to see the mouse arrow moving – GPU is usually utilized on 100%. It is not as vital as processor for system work, so Cortana.exe coin miner viruses do not waste time on trifles and use it all. It often may result in bad consequences.
Shortly about cryptocurrency mining
List of the typical coin miner symptoms
How dangerous is the Cortana.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, Cortana.exe malware makes your PC overloaded. It is unable to run your applications now, since all CPU power is used by a virus. That malware does not care for your wants, all it focuses on is generating income on you. Even if you are patient, and you waited until browser is open, you will likely experience incredibly slow performance. Pages can open for years, any type of logins will likely take about a minute – just a headache for a person who works online.
Cortana.exe Technical Summary.
| File Name | Cortana.exe |
| Type | Trojan Coin Miner |
| Detection Name | Trojan:Win32/CoinMiner |
| Distribution Method | Software bundling, Intrusive advertisement, redirects to shady sites etc. |
| Similar behavior | Dutcdecoderhost.exe, Dataexchangehost.exe, Igfxext.exe |
| Removal | Download and install GridinSoft Anti-Malware for automatic Cortana.exe removal. |
“Visible” damage is not a solitary unpleasant activity coin miners perform to your PC. Cortana.exe coin miner also deals damage to your operating system. To perform all malicious operations properly, it ruins the security components of your system. You will likely see your Microsoft Defender disabled – malware halts it to avoid detection. If you check the HOSTS file, you will likely see a lot of new notes – they are brought in by this trojan miner to connect your PC to a malicious cryptomining network. All these changes shall be gone back to the initial state in the process of PC recovery.
Hardware effects of coin miner activity
Besides slowing down your computer, performing at peak power for a long period of time can cause damage to your machine as well as raise power bills. Hardware components are designed to easily get along with high load, but they are good with it only when they are in a good shape.
Little and covered processor cooling system is quite hard to broke. Meanwhile, GPUs have large and easy-to-access rotors, which can be easily broke if affected while working, for instance, by the user much earlier before the malware injection. Malfunctioning cooling system, together with the extremely high load caused by Cortana.exe can easily lead to GPU failure3. GPUs are also prone to have increased wearing when utilized for cryptocurrency mining. It is surely an undesirable situation when your GPU’s performance plunges 20-30% just after 1-2 weeks of being used in such a way.
How did I get Cortana.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 suspicious web page as a part of a program. Users that spread hacked versions of well-known programs (which do not need the license key) have small chances to earn money. For this reason, there is a very big temptation to add malware to the final package of the hacked app and acquire a coin for each installation. Prior to blaming these people for hacking and also malware distribution, ask yourself – is it okay to avoid buying the program in this manner? It is more affordable to pay $20-$30 at once than to pay a much bigger figure for antivirus program as well as new parts for your desktop.
How to remove the Cortana.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 applications, just like the majority of non-crucial system components, are not started with the system start. That allows you to clean the computer without dealing with high CPU 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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