Slitherio.exe process belongs to a harmful program that can properly be defined as a coin miner trojan virus. That malware type uses your PC components to mine cryptocurrencies, generally – Monero or DarkCoin1. It makes your personal computer roughly unusable as a result of high CPU use.
What is Slitherio.exe process?
Slitherio.exe is a malicious process created by coin miner virus
Slitherio.exe – Really high CPU and GPU use
Besides CPU usage, some of the coin miners also use GPU power for their tasks. In that situation, you will struggle also to see the mouse cursor moving – GPU is often used on 100%. It is not as critical as processor for system work, so Slitherio.exe coin miner viruses don’t waste time on trifles and use all of it. It sometimes can cause unhappy effects.
Shortly about cryptocurrency mining
List of the typical coin miner symptoms
How dangerous is the Slitherio.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, Slitherio.exe virus makes your PC overloaded. It is unable to run your applications anymore, as all processor 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 web browser is open, you will likely struggle with extremely sluggish performance. Pages will open for years, any type of logins will take about a minute – just a nightmare for a person that does a job online.
Slitherio.exe Technical Summary.
| File Name | Slitherio.exe |
| Type | Trojan Coin Miner |
| Detection Name | Trojan:Win32/CoinMiner |
| Distribution Method | Software bundling, Intrusive advertisement, redirects to shady sites etc. |
| Similar behavior | Sbr.exe, Flow.exe, Auepuf.exe |
| Removal | Download and install GridinSoft Anti-Malware for automatic Slitherio.exe removal. |
“Visible” damage is not a solitary unpleasant activity coin miners do to your PC. Slitherio.exe coin miner likewise deals damage to your operating system. To conduct all malevolent functions properly, it ruins the security components 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 load of new entries – they are added by this coin miner to connect your PC to a malicious cryptomining network. All these changes shall be gone back to the initial state in the process of computer recovery.
Hardware effects of coin miner activity
Besides making your computer slow, performing at peak level for long times can trigger damage to your machine and increase electricity bills. PC elements are created to easily get along with high load, but they can do so only when they are in a good shape.
Small and covered processor cooling system is hard to broke. Meanwhile, graphic cards have large and easy-to-access rotors, which can be easily cracked if touched while working, for example, by the user much earlier before the malware injection. Malfunctioning cooling system, together with the really high load caused by Slitherio.exe virus can easily lead to GPU failure3. Video cards are also tend to have very fast wearing when used for cryptocurrency mining. It is likely an undesirable situation when the performance of your video card decreases on 20-30% just after several weeks of being used in such a way.
How did I get Slitherio.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
An additional way you could get this item on your computer is by downloading it from the untrustworthy website as a part of a program. People that spread hacked variants of favored programs (which do not require the license key) have small chances to earn money. For this reason, there is a huge temptation to add malware to the final package of the hacked app and receive a coin for each setup. Prior to criticizing these guys for hacking and also malware spreading, ask yourself – is it okay to avoid purchasing the program in this manner? It is more affordable to pay $20-$30 at once than to pay a much bigger sum for antivirus software as well as new parts for your PC.
How to remove the Slitherio.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 apps, 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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