St.exe process is related to a harmful application that can correctly be defined as a coin miner trojan. That malware form uses your hardware to mine cryptocurrencies, generally – Monero or DarkCoin1. It makes your system almost unfunctional as a result of high CPU use.
What is St.exe process?
St.exe is a malicious process created by coin miner virus
As I have actually specified in the previous paragraph, St.exe is a coin miner virus. The names of the executive file may be different, but the impacts are almost always the identical. Since coin miners aim at cryptocurrency mining, they utilize all available hardware capacity of your desktop to perform this operation. This malware doesn’t care about the fact that you may need to make use of your desktop for other activities – it will continuously consume over 80% of your CPU power.
St.exe – Very high CPU/GPU use
Besides CPU utilization, some of the coin miners also use GPU power for their tasks. In that case, you will likely struggle even to see the mouse cursor moving – GPU is usually used on 100%. It is not as crucial as processor for system work, so St.exe coin miner viruses don’t waste time on trifles and utilize it all. It sometimes may lead to unhappy consequences.
Shortly about cryptocurrency mining
Cryptocurrency mining is a term that means the action of calculating the transaction block hash. That is a integral element of any project based on the blockchain technology. Since this operation takes a lot of calculations, a very powerful PC is needed. Exactly, the video card is better for this purpose, because they have more cores available. Cryptomining farms are usually constructed of dozens of graphic cards to conduct their activity effectively. Such systems are not usable for “normal” purposes, like gaming or browsing the Web. Fraudsters who make profit via this coin miner use someones’ computers instead, even if they are used for the regular activity.2
List of the typical coin miner symptoms
How dangerous is the St.exe miner?
Coin miners does not deal damage to your files. However, they make a lot of unpleasant things with the whole system
Initially, St.exe malware makes your PC overloaded. It is not able to run your applications now, since all processor power is used by a malware. That malware does not care for your necessities, all it pays attention to is making money on you. Even if you are patient, and you waited until web browser is open, you will likely suffer from extremely sluggish performance. Pages can open for years, any sort of logins will take about a minute – just a nightmare for a person that does a job online.
St.exe Technical Summary.
| File Name | St.exe |
| Type | Trojan Coin Miner |
| Detection Name | Trojan:Win32/CoinMiner |
| Distribution Method | Software bundling, Intrusive advertisement, redirects to shady sites etc. |
| Similar behavior | Xxx.exe, X.exe, Gpu.exe |
| Removal | Download and install GridinSoft Anti-Malware for automatic St.exe removal. |
“Visible” harm is not a single unpleasant activity coin miners perform to your computer. St.exe coin miner likewise deals damage to your operating system. To complete all malicious operations correctly, it wrecks the security features of your system. You will likely see your Microsoft Defender disabled – malware stops it to prevent recognition. If you open the HOSTS file, you will likely see a ton of new entries – they are brought in by this coin miner to connect your PC to a malicious cryptomining 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 computer, performing at peak power for long times can trigger damage to your device and raise electricity costs. PC elements are designed to easily deal with high load, but they are good with it only in case when they are in a good shape.
Compact and well-protected processor cooling system is quite hard to broke. Meanwhile, graphic cards have big and easy-to-access rotors, which can be easily broke if touched while running, for instance, by the user much before the malware injection. Malfunctioning cooling system, together with the extremely high load caused by St.exe virus can easily lead to graphic processing unit failure3. Video cards are also prone to have very fast wearing when used for crypto mining. It is surely an unwanted situation 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 St.exe coin miner virus?
Coin miners are spread through different ways, but their main sources are malicious banners and programs from dubious sources
Coin miners are the most widespread malevolent programs through “severe” malware. Adware sometimes works as a carrier for St.exe malware infiltration: it demonstrates you the banners, which contain a link to malware downloading. Yes, this abstract “malware” can belong to any type – an additional adware, spyware, rogue or backdoor. But the statistics say that about 30% of all malware spread through the malevolent banners are coin miners – and St.exe is right with them.4
The example of malicious banners you can see in the Internet
Another way you could get this thing on your PC is by downloading it from the suspicious site as a part of a program. Users who spread hacked versions of well-known programs (which do not require the license key) have small chances to earn money. Therefore, there is a very big lure to add in malware to the final package of the hacked app and acquire a coin for every installation. Prior to blaming these guys for hacking and also malware spreading, ask yourself – is it alright to avoid paying for the program in such a way? It is more affordable to pay $20-$30 at once than to pay a much bigger sum for antivirus program as well as new parts for your desktop.
How to remove the St.exe miner from my PC?
The best way to get rid of this coin miner virus is to use anti-malware software
Getting rid of such a virus involves making use of special tool. Appropriate anti-malware program should have high capability at scanning and also be lightweight – in order to make no problems with usage also on weak PCs. On top of that, it is better to have proactive security in your protection solution – to prevent the virus even before it starts. Microsoft Defender does not have these features for various factors. That’s why I’d advise you to use a third-party anti-malware program for that objective. GridinSoft Anti-Malware is a perfect option that fits each of the specified features.5
Before the malware removal, it is important to reboot your Windows into Safe Mode with Networking. Since St.exe miner consumes a lot of processor power, it is needed to stop it before launching the security program. Otherwise, your scan will last for years, even though the GridinSoft program is pretty lightweight.
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 PC is in Safe Mode, all third-party programs, along with the majority of non-crucial system components, are not launched with the system start. That gives you the ability to clean the system without dealing with high processor usage of the coin miner.
Remove St.exe coin miner virus with GridinSoft Anti-Malware
Download and install GridinSoft Anti-Malware. You can use this anti-malware program for free during its 6-day trial period. In that term, all functions are available, and it takes no payments to remove malware from your system.
After activating your free trial, start Full scan. It may last up to 10 minutes. You may use the PC as usual.
When the scan is finished, press the Clean Now button to remove all detected elements from your system. This procedure takes less than a minute.
Now, you are good to go. Reboot your PC into a normal Windows mode and use just as there was nothing malicious.
Remove St.exe Virus ⛏️ Trojan Coin Miner
Name: St.exe
Description: The St.exe is a Trojan Coin Miner that uses the infected computer’s sources to mine electronic money without your authorization. This St.exe will create your CPU to go for very warm temperatures for prolonged periods of time, which could reduce the life of the CPU.
Operating System: Windows
Application Category: Trojan
User Review
( votes)References
- Read about why Monero and DarkCoin are so popular amongst cybercriminals.
- Detailed explanation of how does cryptomining work.
- About unwanted effects for GPUs in the process of cryptomining.
- Read more about various malware type on Cybersecurity Glossary.
- Our review on GridinSoft Anti-Malware.
