Spotifai.exe Virus (Coin Miner Trojan) Removal

Spotifai.exe executable file belongs to a malevolent application that can accurately be defined as a coin miner virus. That malware type utilizes your hardware to mine cryptocurrencies, primarily – Monero or DarkCoin¹. It makes your personal computer pretty much unusable due to high CPU utilization.

What is Spotifai.exe process?

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

Spotifai.exe – Extremely high CPU as well as GPU usage

Besides CPU utilization, some of the coin miners also make use of GPU power for their tasks. In that case, you will likely struggle also to see the mouse cursor moving – GPU is usually utilized on 100%. It is not as essential as processor for system work, so Spotifai.exe coin miner viruses do not waste time on trifles and utilize all of it. It sometimes may result in unhappy effects.

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 Spotifai.exe miner?

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

Firstly, Spotifai.exe malware makes your system overloaded. It is unable to run your applications now, as all processor power is used by a virus. That malware does not care for your wants, all it pays attention to is generating income on you. Even if you are patient, and you waited until browser is open, you will likely struggle with extremely slow efficiency. Pages can open for years, any type of logins will take about a minute – just a horror story for a person that does a job online.

Spotifai.exe Technical Summary.

File Name	Spotifai.exe
Type	Trojan Coin Miner
Detection Name	Trojan:Win32/CoinMiner
Distribution Method	Software bundling, Intrusive advertisement, redirects to shady sites etc.
Similar behavior	Qasek.exe, Task16minerstarter.exe, Wmpemgr.exe
Removal	Download and install GridinSoft Anti-Malware for automatic Spotifai.exe removal.

“Visible” damage is not a single unpleasant activity coin miners perform to your system. Spotifai.exe coin miner additionally deals damage to your OS. To conduct all malevolent functions effectively, it wrecks the security components of your system. You will likely see your Microsoft Defender disabled – malware halts it to avoid detection. If you check the HOSTS file, you will likely see a lot of new entries – they are added by this coin miner to connect your PC to a malicious mining network. All these changes shall be thrown back to the initial state in the process of computer recovery.

Hardware effects of coin miner activity

Besides making your computer slow, running at peak level for a long period of time may 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.

Small and well-protected CPU fan is not very easy to broke. Meanwhile, graphic cards have big and easy-to-access fans, which can be easily broke if touched while spinning, for example, by the user much earlier before the virus injection. Malfunctioning cooling system, together with the very high load caused by Spotifai.exe miner can easily lead to graphic card failure³. GPUs are also tend to have increased wearing when used for cryptocurrency mining. It is surely a bad situation when your GPU’s performance plunges 20-30% just after 1-2 weeks of being exploited in such a way.

How did I get Spotifai.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

Another way you could get this item on your computer is by downloading it from the suspicious website as a part of a program. Users who spread hacked versions of popular programs (which do not demand the license key) have small chances to earn money. Thus, there is a huge lure to add malware to the final package of the hacked application and receive a coin for every setup. Prior to blaming these individuals for hacking and also malware spreading, ask yourself – is it OK to avoid paying for the program in this manner? It is much cheaper to pay $20-$30 at once than to pay a much greater figure for antivirus program and new parts for your computer.

How to remove the Spotifai.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 PC without dealing with high CPU usage of the coin miner.