Taobao.exe Virus (Coin Miner Trojan) Removal

Taobao.exe process comes from a harmful program that can properly be defined as a coin miner trojan. That malware form utilizes your PC components to mine cryptocurrencies, primarily – Monero or DarkCoin1. It makes your system pretty much nonfunctional due to high CPU use.

What is Taobao.exe process?

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

Taobao.exe – Extremely high CPU as well as GPU use

Besides CPU consumption, some of the coin miners additionally utilize GPU power for their tasks. In that instance, you will likely struggle even to see the mouse cursor moving – GPU is usually utilized on 100%. It is not as critical as CPU for system work, so Taobao.exe coin miner viruses don’t waste time on trifles and use all of it. It sometimes can cause bad 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 Taobao.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, Taobao.exe virus makes your computer overloaded. It is not able to run your applications now, because all CPU power is consumed by a malware. That malware does not care for your wants, 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 experience incredibly slow performance. Pages will open for years, any kind of logins will likely take about a minute – just a headache for a person who does a job online.

    Taobao.exe Technical Summary.

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

    “Visible” harm is not a single negative activity coin miners do to your PC. Taobao.exe coin miner additionally deals damage to your operating system. To perform all malevolent operations correctly, it wrecks the protection mechanisms 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 number of new notes – they are brought in by this trojan miner to connect your computer to a malicious mining network. All these adjustments are about to be thrown back to the original in the process of PC recovery.

    Hardware effects of coin miner activity

    Besides making your computer slow, running at peak level for long times can cause damage to your machine and increase electricity costs. PC elements are designed to easily get along with high load, but they can do so only when they are in a good shape.

    Little and covered CPU fan is not very easy to damage. Meanwhile, GPUs have large and easy-to-access fans, which can be easily broke if touched while running, for example, by the user much earlier before the virus injection. Malfunctioning cooling system, together with the really high load caused by Taobao.exe virus can easily lead to graphic card failure3. GPUs are also prone to have very fast wearing when utilized for cryptocurrency mining. It is likely an undesirable case when the performance of your GPU plunges 20-30% only after several weeks of being used in such a way.

    How did I get Taobao.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 computer is by downloading it from the suspicious site as a part of a program. People who spread hacked variants of well-known programs (which do not need the license key) have small chances to earn money. Therefore, there is a huge lure to include malware to the final package of the hacked app and receive a coin for each installation. Prior to criticizing these guys for hacking and malware distribution, ask yourself – is it OK to avoid buying the program in this manner? It is more affordable to pay $20-$30 one time than to pay a much bigger sum for antivirus software as well as new parts for your computer.

    How to remove the Taobao.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 computer is in Safe Mode, all third-party apps, along with the majority of non-crucial operating system components, are not started with the system start. That allows you to clean the PC without dealing with high processor 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.

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    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.

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