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
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
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
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
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.
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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