About Trojan Coin Miner

A trojan miner is a malicious program that uses the resources of an infected computer to extract (mine) cryptocurrency.

Mining software can be broadly divided into legal and illegal. In the first case, they are freely and openly distributed. The user has the right to install them on his own if he is interested in cryptocurrency transactions. In other cases, the miner is created precisely as a malicious program that operates in a stealthy mode without the user’s knowledge.

The objects of malicious activity can be any device you can create third-party applications: computers, tablets, smartphones. Unauthorized mining is often carried out in botnets, and zombie networks, as practice shows, are created from almost anything. The only condition is the availability of computing resources: on the Internet of Things devices, for example, mining is futile.

The main source of the threat of miner viruses is Trojans – or, more precisely, one of their specific varieties designed to download and install other infections. Malicious agents such as Trojan-Downloader or Trojan-Dropper inject the miner into the infected system and ensure that it starts automatically.

An ordinary home user or an employee of the organization can become a victim of unauthorized mining. In a sense, corporate users are even more interesting to an attacker because it is difficult to notice some symptoms on a company scale, such as increased electricity consumption. The miner loads the device’s computing resources can lead to overheating of components and their premature failure.