mining Archives

How to Detect Bitcoin Malware on your PC

Security, Software, Uncategorizedbitcoin, Detect, mining, virusOphtek, LLC

Jul 2014

Does your computer seem to running much slower than usual? If so, someone may be using your computer’s processing power to mine bitcoins.

This is precisely what bitcoin mining viruses do, yet many of them can be detected with antivirus programs. Malwarebytes is highly recommended for this purpose. Whether your antivirus program is Malwarebytes which we recommend or something else, running a scan every so often will allay infection concerns.

Another way to detect bitcoin malware is by looking at the processes running on your PC. In Windows, hold down the Ctrl and Alt keys while pressing Delete. This will give you the following menu:

Select Start Task Manager from the list of options.

In the Task Manager, select the Processes tab as shown above. Check for any that have unfamiliar names, use a lot of memory or a high percentage of the CPU. You can sort the list by memory and CPU usage by clicking the CPU and Mem Usage column bars at the top. Look up any process with an unfamiliar name on Google.

If the Google search reveals the name to belong to a rogue process, here’s how to remove it from your system.

In addition to being detected by antivirus scanners and causing your PC to use too much of its resources, bitcoin mining viruses can possibly make your computers use more electricity.

All managed services clients are automatically protected against processes that use too much CPU, including bitcoin malware. Although bitcoin mining software on your PC isn’t likely to damage your files, you should always be running a backup to keep your files protected from catastrophic data loss.

For more information, consult your local IT professional.

Thieves Use Yahoo to Spread Bitcoin Mining Malware

Security, Services, Softwarebitcoin, hacker, hijack, malware, mining, yahooOphtek, LLC

Feb 2014

You don’t need dynamites to find Bitcoins, just enough knowledge and computer hardware.

Malware not only steals your personal data, but can also hijack your system and network resources to work on things you don’t approve of.

Bitcoin and other forms of cryptocurrencies have skyrocketed in popularity in recent months. The cryptocurrency craze isn’t reserved just for investors as virtually anyone can get their hands on these lucrative digital coins—given they have the necessary resources. What we’re talking about is: if you don’t have money to invest in Bitcoin, you can mine the Bitcoins. Mining these coins, however, will require some computer know-how and hardware.

Stealing Without Physically Taking

When it comes to knowledge of how hardware works and where digital information flows, cybercriminals and hackers are ahead of the game. What they lack is the hardware, but why do they need to purchase their own hardware when they can steal your processing power? All they have to do is run malicious code on your computer to hijack the computer’s resources remotely and us it to mine Bitcoins for themselves.

Beginning late last year, a slew of malware aimed at hijacking computers for mining Bitcoins began infecting unsuspecting victims. Where and how these tools make their way onto people’s computer can vary, but it is especially troubling if the source is a popular website like Yahoo.

Yahoo admitted in January that its advertising platform was utilized by cybercriminals to distribute hijacking malware and viruses. Fox IT, a cybersecurity firm, estimates that as many as 2 million Yahoo users were affected by the exploit. Yahoo, however, has not given an estimate how many of its users clicked the scam ads.

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While most of us will try to ignore any type of ads that appear on a website, savvy marketers will always find a way to deploy attractive and mind boggling banners that will trick us into clicking. Criminals are also marketers in a sense, and so it is likely that they used these marketing tactics to lure people into clicking their ads on Yahoo.

If you’re not running any resource intensive tasks, the task manager should display low CPU and memory usage.

If you’re a Yahoo user, and notice that your computer is running unusually slow as of late, check your computer’s resource monitor to see which process is taking up abnormally large amount of bandwidth, memory and CPU usage. Any process or application that is hogging up too much system resources could potentially be one of these Bitcoin mining malwares.

If you’re having a hard time navigating and figuring out whether or not you’re a victim of the Bitcoin malware, please contact our IT professionals and we’ll be more than happy to give you a hand!

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Stealing Without Physically Taking

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