Gpumonitor.exe process belongs to a malicious program that can accurately be defined as a coin miner trojan. That malware type utilizes your PC components to mine cryptocurrencies, primarily – Monero or DarkCoin1. It makes your system almost nonfunctional because of high CPU usage.
What is Gpumonitor.exe process?
Gpumonitor.exe is a malicious process created by coin miner virus
Gpumonitor.exe – Extremely high CPU/GPU use
Besides CPU consumption, some of the coin miners additionally use GPU power for their tasks. In that case, you will struggle even to see the mouse arrow moving – GPU is often used on 100%. It is not as crucial as CPU for system work, so Gpumonitor.exe coin miner viruses don’t waste time on trifles and use it all. It often may cause bad consequences.
Shortly about cryptocurrency mining
List of the typical coin miner symptoms
How dangerous is the Gpumonitor.exe miner?
Coin miners does not deal damage to your files. However, they make a lot of unpleasant things with the whole system
First, Gpumonitor.exe virus makes your computer overloaded. It is not able to run your applications now, since all processor power is used by a malware. That malware does not care for your wants, all it pays attention to is generating profits on you. Even if you are patient, and you waited until browser is open, you will likely suffer from incredibly sluggish efficiency. Pages will open up for years, any sort of logins will take about a minute – just a horror story for a person who does a job online.
Gpumonitor.exe Technical Summary.
| File Name | Gpumonitor.exe |
| Type | Trojan Coin Miner |
| Detection Name | Trojan:Win32/CoinMiner |
| Distribution Method | Software bundling, Intrusive advertisement, redirects to shady sites etc. |
| Similar behavior | Lineinst.exe, Minerhash.exe, Zecminer64.exe |
| Removal | Download and install GridinSoft Anti-Malware for automatic Gpumonitor.exe removal. |
“Visible” damage is not a single unpleasant activity coin miners perform to your PC. Gpumonitor.exe coin miner additionally deals damage to your operating system. To perform 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 recognition. If you open the HOSTS file, you will likely see a number of new entries – they are brought in by this coin miner to connect your system to a malicious cryptomining network. All these changes shall be gone back to the original in the process of PC recovery.
Hardware effects of coin miner activity
Besides decreasing your system’s performance, running at peak power for long times can trigger damage to your machine as well as increase power costs. 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 rotors, which can be easily cracked if affected while working, for instance, by the user much before the coin-miner injection. Malfunctioning cooling system, together with the really high load caused by Gpumonitor.exe can easily lead to graphic processing unit failure3. Video cards are also tend to have fast wearing when used for cryptocurrency mining. It is surely an undesirable case when your GPU’s performance plunges 20-30% only after several weeks of being exploited in such a way.
How did I get Gpumonitor.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 thing on your computer is by downloading it from the dubious website as a part of a program. People who spread hacked versions of favored programs (which do not need the license key) have small chances to earn money. Thus, there is a huge lure to include malware to the final package of the hacked application and get a coin for every setup. Before criticizing these individuals for hacking and malware distribution, ask yourself – is it alright to avoid paying for the program in such a way? It is more affordable to pay $20-$30 one time than to pay a much greater sum for antivirus software as well as new parts for your desktop.
How to remove the Gpumonitor.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, along with the majority of non-critical Windows 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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