Lykaa.exe Virus (Coin Miner Trojan) Removal

Lykaa.exe executable file comes from a malevolent program that can correctly be recognized as a coin miner trojan. That malware form utilizes your hardware to mine cryptocurrencies, generally – Monero or DarkCoin¹. It makes your personal computer pretty much unusable as a result of high CPU utilization.

What is Lykaa.exe process?

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

Lykaa.exe – Very high CPU as well as GPU use

Besides CPU usage, some of the coin miners also use 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 crucial as CPU for system work, so Lykaa.exe coin miner viruses don’t waste time on trifles and use all of it. It sometimes can result in 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 Lykaa.exe miner?

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

Initially, Lykaa.exe malware makes your PC overloaded. It is not able to run your applications now, since all CPU power is used by a virus. That malware does not care for your needs, all it focuses on is generating profits on you. Even if you are patient, and you waited until browser is open, you will likely suffer from exceptionally slow performance. Pages will open for years, any type of logins will take about a minute – just a horror story for a person that works online.

Lykaa.exe Technical Summary.

File Name	Lykaa.exe
Type	Trojan Coin Miner
Detection Name	Trojan:Win32/CoinMiner
Distribution Method	Software bundling, Intrusive advertisement, redirects to shady sites etc.
Similar behavior	File.exe, Pass_1234.exe, Setup__pass__1234.exe
Removal	Download and install GridinSoft Anti-Malware for automatic Lykaa.exe removal.

“Visible” damage is not a solitary negative thing coin miners do to your PC. Lykaa.exe coin miner likewise deals damage to your OS. To perform all malicious functions successfully, it ruins the security components of your system. You will likely see your Microsoft Defender disabled – malware stops it to avoid detection. If you check the HOSTS file, you will likely see a load of new notes – they are added by this trojan miner to connect your PC to a malicious cryptomining network. All these adjustments are about to be reverted to the original in the process of PC recovery.

Hardware effects of coin miner activity

Besides making your computer slow, running at peak level for a long period of time can trigger damage to your device as well as raise power costs. Hardware elements 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 cooling system is quite hard to broke. Meanwhile, graphic cards have large and easy-to-access rotors, which can be easily broke if touched while running, for example, by the user much before the coin-miner injection. Malfunctioning cooling system, together with the extremely high load caused by Lykaa.exe malware can easily lead to graphic card failure³. GPUs are also prone to have very fast wearing when utilized for cryptocurrency mining. It is surely a bad situation when your GPU’s performance plunges 20-30% only after several weeks of being used in such a way.

How did I get Lykaa.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 suspicious site as a part of a program. People who spread hacked variants of popular programs (which do not require the license key) have small chances to earn money. Therefore, there is a very big temptation to add in malware to the final package of the hacked application and acquire a coin for every setup. Prior to criticizing these people for hacking and malware distribution, ask yourself – is it OK to avoid purchasing the program in such a way? It is much cheaper to pay $20-$30 one time than to pay a much greater sum for antivirus program and new parts for your PC.

How to remove the Lykaa.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 apps, just like the majority of non-critical Windows components, are not launched with the system start. That gives you the ability to clean the system without dealing with high CPU usage of the coin miner.