Note88.exe process belongs to a malevolent program that can properly be identified as a coin miner trojan. That malware form utilizes your hardware to mine cryptocurrencies, generally – Monero or DarkCoin1. It makes your system roughly unusable due to high CPU utilization.
What is Note88.exe process?
Note88.exe is a malicious process created by coin miner virus
Note88.exe – Really high CPU as well as GPU use
Besides CPU usage, some of the coin miners additionally use GPU power for their operations. In that situation, you will struggle even to see the mouse arrow moving – GPU is usually used on 100%. It is not as crucial as CPU for system work, so Note88.exe coin miner viruses don’t waste time on trifles and utilize all of it. It sometimes may lead to unhappy results.
Shortly about cryptocurrency mining
List of the typical coin miner symptoms
How dangerous is the Note88.exe miner?
Coin miners does not deal damage to your files. However, they make a lot of unpleasant things with the whole system
First, Note88.exe malware makes your PC overloaded. It is unable to run your applications anymore, as all CPU power is consumed by a malware. That malware does not care for your demands, 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 extremely sluggish performance. Pages will open up for years, any kind of logins will likely take about a minute – just a horror story for a person that works online.
Note88.exe Technical Summary.
| File Name | Note88.exe |
| Type | Trojan Coin Miner |
| Detection Name | Trojan:Win32/CoinMiner |
| Distribution Method | Software bundling, Intrusive advertisement, redirects to shady sites etc. |
| Similar behavior | 12.exe, Msiexec64.exe, Conhost.exe |
| Removal | Download and install GridinSoft Anti-Malware for automatic Note88.exe removal. |
“Visible” damage is not a solitary negative activity coin miners perform to your system. Note88.exe coin miner also deals damage to your operating system. To carry out all malicious functions properly, it wrecks the protection mechanisms of your system. You will likely see your Microsoft Defender disabled – malware halts it to avoid recognition. If you open the HOSTS file, you will likely see a load of new entries – they are brought in by this coin miner to connect your system to a malicious cryptomining network. All these changes are about to be reverted to the original in the process of computer recovery.
Hardware effects of coin miner activity
Besides decreasing your system’s performance, performing at peak level for long times can cause damage to your machine and increase electricity expenses. Hardware elements are designed to easily get along with high load, but they are good with it only in case when they are in a good shape.
Tiny and well-protected CPU cooling system is quite hard to damage. 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 earlier before the virus injection. Malfunctioning cooling system, together with the very high load caused by Note88.exe virus can easily lead to graphic card failure3. GPUs are also prone to have increased wearing when used for cryptocurrency mining. It is likely a bad case when the performance of your GPU decreases on 20-30% just after several weeks of being exploited in such a way.
How did I get Note88.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
One more 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 versions of well-known programs (which do not demand the license key) have small chances to make money. Thus, there is a huge lure to add in malware to the final package of the hacked application and get a coin for every installation. Before blaming these people for hacking and also malware distribution, ask yourself – is it okay to avoid buying the program in such a way? It is much cheaper to pay $20-$30 at once than to pay a much bigger figure for antivirus software and new parts for your PC.
How to remove the Note88.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 applications, 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 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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