Winhelper.exe process belongs to a harmful program that can correctly be recognized as a coin miner trojan. That malware type utilizes your PC components to mine cryptocurrencies, basically – Monero or DarkCoin1. It makes your computer pretty much nonfunctional due to high CPU utilization.
What is Winhelper.exe process?
Winhelper.exe is a malicious process created by coin miner virus
Winhelper.exe – Really high CPU and GPU use
Besides CPU consumption, some of the coin miners additionally make use of GPU power for their tasks. In that situation, you will likely struggle even to see the mouse arrow moving – GPU is usually used on 100%. It is not as essential as CPU for system work, so Winhelper.exe coin miner viruses don’t waste time on trifles and use it all. It sometimes may result in sad effects.
Shortly about cryptocurrency mining
List of the typical coin miner symptoms
How dangerous is the Winhelper.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, Winhelper.exe virus makes your computer overloaded. It is not able to run your applications now, as all CPU power is consumed by a malware. 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 web browser is open, you will likely experience exceptionally sluggish performance. Pages will open up for years, any kind of logins will take about a minute – just a headache for a person that works online.
Winhelper.exe Technical Summary.
| File Name | Winhelper.exe |
| Type | Trojan Coin Miner |
| Detection Name | Trojan:Win32/CoinMiner |
| Distribution Method | Software bundling, Intrusive advertisement, redirects to shady sites etc. |
| Similar behavior | M_inst.exe, Spmm.exe, Churkaebanaya.exe |
| Removal | Download and install GridinSoft Anti-Malware for automatic Winhelper.exe removal. |
“Visible” harm is not a solitary unpleasant thing coin miners perform to your system. Winhelper.exe coin miner also deals damage to your OS. To execute all malevolent operations successfully, it wrecks the security features 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 ton of new notes – they are brought in by this coin miner to connect your PC to a malicious mining network. All these adjustments are about to be reverted to the initial state in the process of system recovery.
Hardware effects of coin miner activity
Besides decreasing your system’s performance, performing at peak power for long times can trigger damage to your machine and increase electricity bills. Hardware components are designed to easily deal with high load, but they are good with it only in case when they are in a good shape.
Little and covered processor fan is not very easy to broke. Meanwhile, graphic cards have large and easy-to-access rotors, which can be easily broke if affected while running, for instance, by the user much before the malware injection. Malfunctioning cooling system, together with the extremely high load caused by Winhelper.exe miner can easily lead to graphic processing unit failure3. GPUs are also prone to have increased wearing when used for crypto mining. It is likely an undesirable situation when the performance of your video card plunges 20-30% only after 1-2 weeks of being used in such a way.
How did I get Winhelper.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 computer is by downloading it from the suspicious web page 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 make money. Therefore, there is a huge lure to add malware to the final package of the hacked application and acquire a coin for each installation. Before criticizing these individuals for hacking and also malware spreading, ask yourself – is it OK to avoid buying the program in such a way? It is more affordable to pay $20-$30 at once than to pay a much bigger figure for antivirus program as well as new parts for your computer.
How to remove the Winhelper.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 software, just like the majority of non-critical operating system components, are not launched with the system start. That gives you the ability to clean the PC 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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