The Winlogson.exe process is associated with a malicious program commonly known as a coin miner trojan. This type of malware utilizes your computer’s resources to mine for cryptocurrencies, particularly Monero or DarkCoin1. As a result of this intense CPU usage, your computer’s functionality may be severely compromised.
What is Winlogson.exe process?
Winlogson.exe is a malicious process created by coin miner virus
To clarify, the Winlogson.exe file is essentially a virus that serves as a coin miner trojan. While the name of the executable file may vary, the effects are typically the same. Coin miners are designed to utilize all available hardware resources on your computer to perform cryptocurrency mining. Unfortunately, this type of malware does not consider that you may need to use your computer for other purposes and can utilize over 80% of your processor power, causing significant disruptions to your computer’s performance.
Winlogson.exe – Very high CPU as well as GPU usage
Besides CPU utilization, some coin miners utilize GPU power for their tasks. In that instance, you will likely struggle to see the mouse arrow moving – GPU is usually utilized at 100%. It is not as essential as the processor for system work, so Winlogson.exe coin miner viruses don’t waste time on trifles and use all of it. It often may cause unhappy effects.
Shortly about cryptocurrency mining
Crypto mining means calculating the transaction block hash. That is a basic part of anything based on blockchain technology. Since this action requires many calculations, a high-end PC is required. The graphic card is better for this purpose because more cores are available. Cryptomining farms are usually constructed of tens and hundreds of GPUs to conduct their activity effectively. Such systems are not usable for “normal” purposes, like gaming or browsing the Web. Crooks who gain money via this coin miner use someone’s PCs instead, even if they are used for regular activity.2
List of the typical coin miner symptoms
How dangerous is the Winlogson.exe miner?
Coin miners do not deal damage to your files. However, they do a lot of unpleasant things with the whole system
Firstly, Winlogson.exe virus makes your PC overloaded. It cannot run your applications anymore since a virus consumes all CPU power. That malware does not care for your demands. All it pays attention to is generating profits for you. Even if you are patient and you wait until the web browser is open, you will likely experience extremely sluggish performance. Pages can open for years. Any logins will likely take about a minute – just a headache for someone who works online.
Winlogson.exe Technical Summary.
| File Name | Winlogson.exe |
| Type | Trojan Coin Miner |
| Detection Name | Trojan:Win32/CoinMiner |
| Distribution Method | Software bundling, Intrusive advertisement, redirects to shady sites, etc. |
| Similar behavior | Binscheduler.exe, Bintask.exe, Dstudio.gui |
Hardware effects of coin miner activity
Besides decreasing your computer’s performance, running at peak power for long times can cause damage to your machine and raise power expenses. Hardware elements are created to deal with high load easily, but they can do so only in case when they are in good shape.
Little and well-protected processor cooling system is quite hard to crack. Meanwhile, graphic cards have large and easy-to-access fans, which the user can easily break if touched while working, for example, much earlier before the coin-miner injection. Malfunctioning cooling system, together with the high load caused by Winlogson.exe malware, can easily lead to graphic card failure3. GPUs also tend to have very fast wearing when used for crypto mining. It is surely an undesirable case 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 the Winlogson.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 one of the most widespread malevolent programs through “serious” viruses. Adware often serves as a carrier for Winlogson.exe malware infiltration: it shows you the banners, which have a link to malware downloading. Sure, this abstract “malware” can belong to any kind – yet another adware, spyware, rogue or backdoor. However, the statistics say that about 30% of all malware spread through the malicious banners are coin miners – and Winlogson.exe is just one of them.
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 dubious site as a part of a program. Users who spread hacked variants of well-known programs (which do not need the license key) have small chances of earning money. Thus, there is a huge temptation to add in malware to the final package of the hacked application and receive a coin for every installation. Before blaming these individuals for hacking and malware distribution, 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 more significant sum for an antivirus program as well as new parts for your computer.
How to remove the Winlogson.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, choose Power, and click 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 computer is in Safe Mode, all third-party programs, just like most non-crucial operating system components, are not launched with the system start. That gives you the ability to clean the computer without dealing with the high CPU usage of the coin miner.
References
- To learn more about why cybercriminals favor Monero and DarkCoin, please refer to this article.
- Detailed explanation of how does cryptomining work.
- About unwanted effects for GPUs in the process of crypto mining.
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