Office.exe Virus ⛏️ (Coin Miner Trojan) Removal

Written by Robert Bailey
Office.exe process belongs to a malevolent program that can properly be recognized as a coin miner trojan virus. That malware form utilizes your PC components to mine cryptocurrencies, generally – Monero or DarkCoin1. It makes your system roughly unfunctional because of high CPU use.
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What is Office.exe process?

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

As I have mentioned in the previous paragraph, Office.exe is a coin miner virus. The names of the executive file may be different, but the impacts are usually the identical. Because coin miners aim at cryptocurrency mining, they use all available hardware capacity of your PC to conduct this procedure. This malware doesn’t care about the fact that you probably need to use your device for other activities – it will always consume over 80% of your processor power.

Office.exe Windows Process

Office.exe – Extremely high CPU and GPU use

Besides CPU utilization, some of the coin miners additionally make use of GPU power for their tasks. In that case, you will struggle also to see the mouse arrow moving – GPU is often utilized on 100%. It is not as critical as processor for system work, so Office.exe coin miner viruses don’t waste time on trifles and utilize all of it. It sometimes may lead to bad consequences.

Shortly about cryptocurrency mining

Crypto mining means the activity of calculating the transaction block hash. That is a integral part of any project based on the blockchain technology. Since this operation takes a lot of calculations, a high-end machine is needed. Exactly, the GPU is better for this purpose, because they have more cores available. Cryptomining farms are usually constructed of tens and hundreds of graphic cards to conduct their activity effectively. Such systems are not usable for “usual” 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.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 Office.exe miner?

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

    Initially, Office.exe malware makes your computer overloaded. It is unable to run your applications now, as all CPU power is consumed by a virus. That malware does not care for your demands, 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 extremely slow efficiency. Pages will open for years, any sort of logins will take about a minute – just a nightmare for a person who does a job online.

    Office.exe Technical Summary.

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

    “Visible” damage is not a solitary bad activity coin miners do to your PC. Office.exe coin miner additionally deals damage to your operating system. To conduct all malevolent functions successfully, it ruins the protection features of your system. You will likely see your Microsoft Defender disabled – malware halts it to avoid recognition. If you check the HOSTS file, you will likely see a ton of new entries – they are added by this trojan miner to connect your PC to a malicious cryptomining network. All these adjustments shall be thrown back to the initial state 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 device and increase power expenses. Hardware elements are designed to easily get along with high load, but they can do so only when they are in a good shape.

    Tiny and well-protected CPU cooling system is quite hard to crack. Meanwhile, GPUs have big and easy-to-access rotors, which can be easily cracked if touched while working, for example, by the user much before the virus injection. Malfunctioning cooling system, together with the extremely high load caused by Office.exe malware can easily lead to graphic processing unit failure3. Graphic cards are also tend to have very fast wearing when used for cryptocurrency mining. It is likely a bad case when your GPU’s performance decreases on 20-30% only after 1-2 weeks of being used in such a way.

    How did I get Office.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 one of the most common malicious programs among “serious” malware. Adware often acts as a carrier for Office.exe malware injection: it shows you the banners, which have a link to malware downloading. Yes, this abstract “malware” may belong to any type – an additional adware, spyware, rogue or backdoor. But the statistics say that approximately 30% of all malware spread through the malevolent banners are coin miners – and Office.exe is right among them.4

    Unwanted banners adware

    The example of malicious banners you can see in the Internet

    An additional way you could get this item on your PC is by downloading it from the dubious web page as a part of a program. People that spread hacked variants of well-known programs (which do not demand the license key) have small chances to get paid. For this reason, there is a huge temptation to add in malware to the final package of the hacked app and get a coin for each installation. Prior to blaming these individuals for hacking and malware distribution, ask yourself – is it okay to avoid purchasing 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 program and new parts for your computer.

    How to remove the Office.exe 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 demands using specific program. Proper security tool should have high efficiency at scanning and be lightweight – in order to make no problems with utilization even on weak systems. On top of that, it is recommended to have proactive security in your security solution – to halt the virus even before it launches. Microsoft Defender does not have these functions for different reasons. That’s why I’d recommend you to use a third-party anti-malware program for that purpose. GridinSoft Anti-Malware is a superb choice that fits all of the mentioned characteristics.5

    Prior to the malware removal, it is important to boot your operating system into Safe Mode with Networking. Since Office.exe miner consumes a lot of processor capacity, it is needed to stop 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.

    Boot into Windows Safe Mode

    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.

    windows safe mode boot option with command prompt

    When your computer is in Safe Mode, all third-party software, just like the majority of non-critical operating 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 Office.exe 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.

    GridinSoft Anti-Malware free trial

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

    Scanning in GridinSoft Anti-Malware

    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.

    GridinSoft Anti-Malware after the scan process

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

    Remove Office.exe Virus ⛏️ Trojan Coin Miner

    Name: Office.exe

    Description: The Office.exe is a Trojan Coin Miner that uses the infected computer’s sources to mine electronic money without your authorization. This Office.exe will create your CPU to go for very warm temperatures for prolonged periods of time, which could reduce the life of the CPU.

    Operating System: Windows

    Application Category: Trojan

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    References

    1. Read about why Monero and DarkCoin are so popular amongst cybercriminals.
    2. Detailed explanation of how does cryptomining work.
    3. About unwanted effects for GPUs in the process of cryptomining.
    4. Read more about various malware type on Cybersecurity Glossary.
    5. Our review on GridinSoft Anti-Malware.

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    About the author

    Robert Bailey

    I'm Robert Bailey, a passionate Security Engineer with a deep fascination for all things related to malware, reverse engineering, and white hat ethical hacking.

    As a white hat hacker, I firmly believe in the power of ethical hacking to bolster security measures. By identifying vulnerabilities and providing solutions, I contribute to the proactive defense of digital infrastructures.

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