Rat.exe process comes from a malicious application that can correctly be defined as a coin miner virus. That malware form utilizes your PC components to mine cryptocurrencies, basically – Monero or DarkCoin1. It makes your personal computer almost unusable because of high CPU usage.
What is Rat.exe process?
Rat.exe is a malicious process created by coin miner virus
Rat.exe – Very high CPU/GPU use
Besides CPU utilization, some of the coin miners additionally utilize GPU power for their operations. In that case, you will likely struggle even to see the mouse arrow moving – GPU is often used on 100%. It is not as important as processor for system work, so Rat.exe coin miner viruses don’t waste time on trifles and utilize all of it. It often may cause bad results.
Shortly about cryptocurrency mining
List of the typical coin miner symptoms
How dangerous is the Rat.exe miner?
Coin miners does not deal damage to your files. However, they make a lot of unpleasant things with the whole system
First, Rat.exe virus makes your PC overloaded. It is not able to run your applications now, as all CPU power is used by a malware. That malware does not care for your necessities, all it focuses on is generating profits on you. Even if you are patient, and you waited until web browser is open, you will likely experience exceptionally slow performance. Pages will open up for years, any type of logins will take about a minute – just a nightmare for a person who does a job online.
Rat.exe Technical Summary.
| File Name | Rat.exe |
| Type | Trojan Coin Miner |
| Detection Name | Trojan:Win32/CoinMiner |
| Distribution Method | Software bundling, Intrusive advertisement, redirects to shady sites etc. |
| Similar behavior | Vbc.exe, Rsdeteto.exe, Data64_3.exe |
| Removal | Download and install GridinSoft Anti-Malware for automatic Rat.exe removal. |
“Visible” damage is not a single unpleasant activity coin miners do to your personal computer. Rat.exe coin miner also deals damage to your operating system. To perform all malicious functions successfully, it wrecks the protection features of your system. You will likely see your Microsoft Defender disabled – malware halts it to prevent recognition. If you check the HOSTS file, you will likely see a lot of new entries – they are brought in by this trojan miner to connect your system to a malicious cryptomining network. All these changes are about to be reverted to the initial state in the process of computer recovery.
Hardware effects of coin miner activity
Besides making your PC slow, performing at peak level for long times may cause damage to your device and increase electricity costs. PC elements are created to easily get along with high load, but they can do so only in case when they are in a good shape.
Little and covered processor fan is quite hard to damage. Meanwhile, GPUs have large and easy-to-access rotors, which can be easily cracked if affected while spinning, for instance, by the user much before the coin-miner injection. Malfunctioning cooling system, together with the unusually high load caused by Rat.exe virus can easily lead to graphic processing unit failure3. Video cards are also prone to have very fast wearing when used for cryptocurrency mining. It is likely an undesirable situation when the performance of your GPU plunges 20-30% just after several weeks of being used in such a way.
How did I get Rat.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 item on your PC is by downloading it from the untrustworthy website as a part of a program. Users that spread hacked variants of favored programs (which do not demand the license key) have small chances to earn money. Therefore, there is a huge temptation to add malware to the final package of the hacked application and get a coin for every setup. Prior to blaming these guys for hacking and also malware spreading, ask yourself – is it okay to avoid purchasing the program in this manner? It is much cheaper to pay $20-$30 at once than to pay a much bigger sum for antivirus software as well as new parts for your desktop.
How to remove the Rat.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 applications, along with the majority of non-crucial system components, are not launched with the system start. That gives you the ability to clean the PC 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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