Minas Cryptocurrency ⛏️ Mining Malware

Minas is a notorious type of malware that specializes in cryptocurrency mining. It disguises itself as the legitimate XMRIG application, which is used for mining the Monero cryptocurrency. However, Minas poses a serious threat to infected machines, as it exerts excessive strain on system resources and hardware, compromising their health and performance.

This malware employs a range of techniques to evade detection and ensure its persistence on infected devices. Its primary objective is to mine cryptocurrency, a process that involves solving complex mathematical problems to generate digital currencies. Traditionally, mining requires powerful hardware, but cyber criminals capitalize on victims’ devices or even entire botnets to carry out these resource-intensive operations, bypassing the need to purchase their own equipment.

Once Minas infiltrates a system, it hijacks system resources such as CPUs and GPUs, pushing them to their limits in order to generate the desired digital currencies. This unauthorized usage can consume up to 100% of the available resources, resulting in the system constantly freezing, crashing, or experiencing severe issues that render the device practically unusable.

Moreover, the excessive strain on the system can lead to an accumulation of heat, especially when combined with other factors such as poor ventilation or high room temperature. This can ultimately lead to hardware damage, potentially frying critical components and resulting in permanent data loss.

In summary, the presence of Minas or similar software on a device can have dire consequences, including diminished system performance, hardware failure, permanent data loss, and significant financial losses.

If you suspect that your device has been infected by Minas or any other malware, it is crucial to act swiftly. Perform a thorough system scan using reputable antivirus software to detect and eliminate all threats effectively. By taking immediate action, you can safeguard your device, protect your data, and prevent further damage.

It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!

When we talk about the intrusion of unfamiliar programs into your computer’s work, the proverb “Forewarned is forearmed” describes the situation as accurately as possible. Gridinsoft Anti-Malware is exactly the tool that is always useful to have in your armory: fast, efficient, up-to-date. It is appropriate to use it as an emergency help at the slightest suspicion of infection.

DOWNLOAD NOW

Gridinsoft Anti-Malware 6-day trial available.
EULA | Privacy Policy | 10% Off Coupon

What is Minas process?

Minas is a malicious process created by coin miner virus

As I have specified in the introduction, Minas is a coin miner virus. The names of the .exe file can be different, however, the impacts are generally the identical. Since coin miners focus on cryptocurrency mining, they utilize all available hardware power of your PC to conduct this process. This malware doesn’t care about the fact that you may need to use your computer for other tasks – it will consistently use over 80% of your processor power.

Minas – Extremely high CPU and GPU use

Besides CPU usage, some of the coin miners also use GPU power for their operations. In that situation, you will likely struggle even to see the mouse cursor moving – GPU is usually used on 100%. It is not as vital as CPU for system work, so Minas coin miner viruses don’t waste time on trifles and use all of it. It sometimes may result in bad effects.

Shortly about cryptocurrency mining

Cryptocurrency mining term means the operation of calculating the transaction block hash. That is a basic part of any project based on the blockchain technology. Since this action takes a lot of calculations, a strong machine is needed. Exactly, the GPU is better for this purpose, because they have more cores available. Cryptocurrency mining farms are usually constructed of tens and hundreds of video cards to conduct their activity effectively. Such systems are not usable for “classic” purposes, like gaming or web browsing. Crooks who make profit via this coin miner use someones’ computers instead, even if they are used for the regular activity.¹

List of the typical coin miner symptoms

How dangerous is the Minas miner?

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

First off, Minas malware makes your PC overloaded. It is not able to run your applications anymore, as all CPU power is used by a malware. That malware does not care for your necessities, all it pays attention to is making money on you. Even if you are patient, and you waited until web browser is open, you will likely struggle with extremely sluggish efficiency. Pages will open up for years, any kind of logins will likely take about a minute – just a nightmare for a person who does a job online.

Minas Technical Summary.

“Visible” damage is not a solitary bad activity coin miners perform to your personal computer. Minas coin miner also deals damage to your operating system. To perform all malicious functions successfully, it wrecks the protection components of your system. You will likely see your Microsoft Defender disabled – malware halts 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 computer to a malicious mining network. All these changes shall be reverted to the original in the process of PC recovery.

Hardware effects of coin miner activity

Besides slowing down your computer, running at peak level for a long period of time may trigger damage to your machine as well as increase electricity expenses. Hardware components are created to easily deal with high load, but they can do so only when they are in a good shape.

Small and covered processor cooling system is not very easy to crack. Meanwhile, graphic cards have large and easy-to-access fans, which can be easily cracked if affected while spinning, for instance, by the user much before the malware injection. Malfunctioning cooling system, together with the really high load caused by Minas miner can easily lead to graphic processing unit failure². GPUs are also tend to have fast wearing when used for crypto mining. It is likely an unwanted case when your GPU’s performance decreases on 20-30% just after several weeks of being used in such a way.

How did I get Minas 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 “serious” malware. Adware sometimes acts as a carrier for Minas malware infiltration: it shows you the banners, which include a link to malware downloading. Yes, this abstract “malware” may belong to any type – yet another adware, spyware, rogue or backdoor. But the statistics say that approximately 30% of all malware spread with the malicious banners are coin miners – and Minas is just among them.

The example of malicious banners you can see in the Internet

One more way you could get this thing on your PC is by downloading it from the unreliable 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 lure to add in malware to the final package of the hacked application and acquire a coin for each setup. Before criticizing these guys for hacking and malware spreading, ask yourself – is it alright to avoid paying for the program in this manner? It is much cheaper to pay $20-$30 one time than to pay a much greater sum for antivirus program as well as new parts for your PC.

How to remove the Minas miner from my PC?

The best way to get rid of this coin miner virus is to use anti-malware software

Removing such a virus needs the use of specific software. Appropriate security tool should have high efficiency at scanning and be lightweight – in order to create no problems with usage even on weak systems. Additionally, it is better to have on-run protection in your security solution – to stop the virus even before it launches. Microsoft Defender lacks these functions for different reasons. That’s why I’d suggest you to use a third-party anti-malware program for that goal. GridinSoft Anti-Malware is a great option that fits all of the specified features.³

Before the malware removal, it is important to boot your system into Safe Mode with Networking. Since Minas miner takes a lot of processor capacity, it is required to halt it before launching the security program. Otherwise, your scan will last for years, even though the GridinSoft program is pretty lightweight.

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, along with the majority of non-critical system components, are not started with the system start. That allows you to clean the system without dealing with high CPU usage of the coin miner.

Remove Minas coin miner virus with GridinSoft Anti-Malware

Download and install GridinSoft Anti-Malware. You can use this anti-malware program for free during its 6-day trial period. In that term, all functions are available, and it takes no payments to remove malware from your system.

After activating your free trial, start Full scan. It may last up to 10 minutes. You may use the PC as usual.

When the scan is finished, press the Clean Now button to remove all detected elements from your system. This procedure takes less than a minute.

Now, you are good to go. Reboot your PC into a normal Windows mode and use just as there was nothing malicious.

1. Detailed explanation of how does cryptomining work.
2. About unwanted effects for GPUs in the process of cryptomining.
3. Our review on GridinSoft Anti-Malware.

Spanish Turkish