Ks_bridge.exe Virus (Coin Miner Trojan) Removal

Ks_bridge.exe process belongs to a malicious application that can accurately be recognized as a coin miner trojan virus. That malware type uses your hardware to mine cryptocurrencies, generally – Monero or DarkCoin¹. It makes your personal computer pretty much nonfunctional due to high CPU utilization.

What is Ks_bridge.exe process?

Ks_bridge.exe is a malicious process created by coin miner virus

Ks_bridge.exe – Really high CPU and GPU use

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

Shortly about cryptocurrency mining

Crypto mining is a term that means the activity of calculating the transaction block hash. That is a basic element of anything based on the blockchain technology. Since this operation takes a lot of calculations, a very powerful desktop is needed. Exactly, the GPU is better for this task, because they have more cores available. Cryptocurrency mining farms are usually constructed of dozens of GPUs to complete their task efficiently. Such computer systems are not usable for “usual” purposes, like gaming or browsing the Web. Fraudsters who make profit via this coin miner use someones’ PCs instead, even if they are used for the regular activity.²

List of the typical coin miner symptoms

Your device overheats (system unit/laptop body is very hot)

You are not able to open your apps or they are opening for ages

Unknown process is running in the background and consumes your PC resources

Windows Defender does not respond

How dangerous is the Ks_bridge.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, Ks_bridge.exe malware makes your computer overloaded. It is unable to run your applications anymore, since all CPU power is consumed by a virus. That malware does not care for your wants, all it focuses on is making money on you. Even if you are patient, and you waited until browser is open, you will likely experience extremely slow performance. Pages will open up for years, any kind of logins will likely take about a minute – just a nightmare for a person that does a job online.

Ks_bridge.exe Technical Summary.

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

“Visible” damage is not a solitary negative thing coin miners perform to your computer. Ks_bridge.exe coin miner also deals damage to your operating system. To execute all malevolent operations effectively, 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 ton of new entries – they are added by this coin miner to connect your computer to a malicious cryptomining network. All these changes are about to be gone back to the original in the process of PC recovery.

Hardware effects of coin miner activity

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

Little and well-protected CPU fan is hard to damage. Meanwhile, GPUs have large and easy-to-access fans, which can be easily broke if affected while spinning, for example, by the user much earlier before the malware injection. Malfunctioning cooling system, together with the extremely high load caused by Ks_bridge.exe miner can easily lead to GPU failure³. GPUs are also tend to have increased wearing when used for cryptocurrency mining. It is likely an unwanted situation when your GPU’s performance decreases on 20-30% only after 1-2 weeks of being exploited in such a way.

How did I get Ks_bridge.exe coin miner virus?

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

Coin miners are the most widespread malicious programs through “severe” viruses. Adware often serves as a carrier for Ks_bridge.exe malware injection: it shows you the banners, which include a link to malware downloading. Sure, this abstract “malware” can belong to any type – an additional adware, spyware, rogue or backdoor. However, the statistics show that around 30% of all malware spread with the malevolent banners are coin miners – and Ks_bridge.exe is right one of them.

The example of malicious banners you can see in the Internet

Another way you could get this thing on your PC is by downloading it from the suspicious web page as a part of a program. People who spread hacked variants of well-known programs (which do not require the license key) have small chances to get paid. For this reason, there is a very big temptation to add malware to the final package of the hacked application and get a coin for every installation. Before blaming these guys for hacking and malware spreading, ask yourself – is it okay 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 PC.

How to remove the Ks_bridge.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 PC is in Safe Mode, all third-party programs, just like the majority of non-critical Windows 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.