Remove Drm.exe Miner virus

Drm.exe process is related to a malicious program that can correctly be defined as a coin miner trojan virus. That malware type uses your hardware to mine cryptocurrencies, generally – Monero or DarkCoin1. It makes your computer almost nonfunctional because of high CPU usage.

What is Drm.exe process?

Drm.exe is a malicious process created by coin miner virus
Drm.exe Windows Process

Drm.exe – Extremely high CPU/GPU use

Besides CPU consumption, some of the coin miners additionally use GPU power for their operations. In that situation, you will probably struggle also to see the mouse arrow moving – GPU is often used on 100%. It is not as crucial as processor for system work, so Drm.exe coin miner viruses do not waste time on trifles and use all of it. It sometimes can cause sad results.

Shortly about cryptocurrency mining

List of the typical coin miner symptoms

  • Microsoft Defender is stopped;
  • CPU and GPU is loaded at 80-90% exactly after the system start
  • Cooling fans are running at high speed and create a lot of noise
  • A single process in Task Manager consumes all CPU and GPU power
  • How dangerous is the Drm.exe miner?

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

    First of all, Drm.exe virus makes your computer overloaded. It is not able to run your applications now, as all CPU power is consumed by a virus. That malware does not care for your wants, all it focuses on is making money on you. Even if you are patient, and you waited until browser is open, you will likely struggle with exceptionally slow efficiency. Pages will open up for years, any sort of logins will likely take about a minute – just a headache for a person who does a job online.

    Drm.exe Technical Summary.

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

    “Visible” harm is not a solitary unpleasant activity coin miners do to your computer. Drm.exe coin miner likewise deals damage to your OS. To execute all malicious functions effectively, it ruins the security features of your system. You will likely see your Microsoft Defender disabled – malware stops it to avoid recognition. If you open the HOSTS file, you will likely see a ton of new notes – they are brought in by this coin miner to connect your PC to a malicious cryptomining network. All these adjustments shall be reverted to the original in the process of computer recovery.

    Hardware effects of coin miner activity

    Besides making your PC slow, running at peak power for a long period of time may cause damage to your device and raise electricity costs. Hardware components are created to easily get along with high load, but they can do so only when they are in a good shape.

    Compact and covered processor 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 spinning, for instance, by the user much earlier before the virus injection. Malfunctioning cooling system, together with the extremely high load caused by Drm.exe malware can easily lead to graphic card failure3. Video cards are also tend to have fast wearing when utilized for cryptocurrency mining. It is surely a bad case when your GPU’s performance plunges 20-30% just after 1-2 weeks of being exploited in such a way.

    How did I get Drm.exe coin miner virus?

    Coin miners are spread through different ways, but their main sources are malicious banners and programs from dubious sources
    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 unreliable website as a part of a program. People that spread hacked versions of popular programs (which do not demand the license key) have small chances to earn money. For this reason, there is a very big temptation to add malware to the final package of the hacked application and receive a coin for each setup. Before criticizing these guys for hacking and malware spreading, ask yourself – is it okay to avoid paying for the program in this manner? It is more affordable to pay $20-$30 at once than to pay a much greater sum for antivirus software as well as new parts for your PC.

    How to remove the Drm.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.

    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 PC is in Safe Mode, all third-party software, along with the majority of non-critical Windows 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

    1. Read about why Monero and DarkCoin are so popular amongst cybercriminals.
    2. About unwanted effects for GPUs in the process of cryptomining.

    Spanish Turkish

    About the author

    Robert Bailey

    Security engineer focused on malware behavior, removal workflows, and Windows hardening. Robert reviews threat articles for practical accuracy, checking detection names, symptoms, and cleanup steps before publication.

    Leave a Comment