Quickassist.exe process is related to a harmful program that can properly be recognized as a coin miner virus. That malware type uses your hardware to mine cryptocurrencies, basically – Monero or DarkCoin1. It makes your system almost unfunctional as a result of high CPU utilization.
What is Quickassist.exe process?
Quickassist.exe is a malicious process created by coin miner virus
Quickassist.exe – Extremely high CPU/GPU usage
Besides CPU utilization, some of the coin miners additionally use GPU power for their tasks. In that situation, you will struggle also to see the mouse arrow moving – GPU is usually utilized on 100%. It is not as vital as CPU for system work, so Quickassist.exe coin miner viruses do not waste time on trifles and utilize it all. It sometimes may result in sad consequences.
Shortly about cryptocurrency mining
List of the typical coin miner symptoms
How dangerous is the Quickassist.exe miner?
Coin miners does not deal damage to your files. However, they make a lot of unpleasant things with the whole system
First off, Quickassist.exe virus makes your system overloaded. It is not able to run your applications anymore, because all processor power is consumed by a malware. That malware does not care for your necessities, all it pays attention to is generating profits on you. Even if you are patient, and you waited until web browser is open, you will likely experience exceptionally sluggish efficiency. Pages will open for years, any kind of logins will take about a minute – just a nightmare for a person that does a job online.
Quickassist.exe Technical Summary.
| File Name | Quickassist.exe |
| Type | Trojan Coin Miner |
| Detection Name | Trojan:Win32/CoinMiner |
| Distribution Method | Software bundling, Intrusive advertisement, redirects to shady sites etc. |
| Similar behavior | Uploader.exe, Fcpaws.exe, Nwjs.exe |
| Removal | Download and install GridinSoft Anti-Malware for automatic Quickassist.exe removal. |
“Visible” damage is not a single bad thing coin miners do to your PC. Quickassist.exe coin miner likewise deals damage to your OS. To conduct 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 number of new notes – they are brought in by this coin miner to connect your PC to a malicious mining network. All these changes are about to be thrown back to the initial state in the process of computer recovery.
Hardware effects of coin miner activity
Besides slowing down your PC, running at peak level for long times may trigger damage to your machine as well as raise electricity expenses. PC components are created to easily deal with high load, but they can do so only when they are in a good shape.
Tiny and well-protected CPU fan is hard to damage. Meanwhile, graphic cards have big and easy-to-access fans, which can be easily broke if affected while running, for example, by the user much earlier before the malware injection. Malfunctioning cooling system, together with the really high load caused by Quickassist.exe malware can easily lead to graphic card failure3. Graphic cards are also prone to have very fast wearing when used for cryptocurrency mining. It is surely a bad case when the performance of your GPU decreases on 20-30% only after several weeks of being used in such a way.
How did I get Quickassist.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 that spread hacked variants of well-known programs (which do not demand the license key) have small chances to get paid. Hence, there is a very big lure to include malware to the final package of the hacked application and acquire a coin for every setup. Before blaming these guys for hacking and also malware spreading, ask yourself – is it alright to avoid paying for the program in this manner? It is much cheaper to pay $20-$30 at once than to pay a much bigger figure for antivirus program as well as new parts for your PC.
How to remove the Quickassist.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 computer 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 gives you the ability 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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