XMRig Virus

XMRig is a legitimate cryptocurrency mining tool that is developed by the same-named team. It is designed to mine Monero (XMR) cryptocurrency, using the hardware of your computer. By design, it is 100% safe, and does not violate your security in any way. But there are a lot of cases when cybercriminals hijack this program or its name for outlaw purposes.

Is XMRig a virus?

It is hard to say clearly without checking the details. The easiest situation is when you have never touched crypto mining, and suddenly discover an instance of XMRig running on your computer. It cannot appear out of the blue, and Windows does not carry one in the standard distribution. Hence, if you know that no mining tools like XMRig program can be present – you definitely have a deal with a virus.

One more sign of a malicious variant of XMRig is CPU consumption. For sure, it will consume your CPU power even when it is legit. But the legit program does not take a lot of processor power by default. Meanwhile, the virus does not think about your comfort – and takes up to 90%, making your system impossible to use.

Malicious XMRig instance as a

How do I know if XMRig is legit?

In all cases it requires a bit more precise check-up. First of all, it is important to check if the process you spectate in your Task Manager is legit at all. The original XMRig process has the name “xmrig” and a specific logo. Fraudulent processes can also be called the same, but will likely have no logo. But the more often case is when the process has just a similar name, not the same. Here are the most typical names of the malicious copies:

wup.exe
xmrig99new.exe
xmrig3.exe
xmrig.exe
xmrig-notls.exe
winloading.exe (with logo)
fw4.exe (with logo)
x.exe (with logo)
xxx.exe (with logo)
system.exe (with logo)

Checking the file location

If you are not certain about the file name of the file you see, check its location on your disk. For this purpose, click it in the Task Manager with a right mouse button, then choose “Open file location”. The directory that appears after this action is, exactly, the place where this file is stored. If it lies somewhere in C:\Users\%your_username%\temp, it is likely a virus¹. Overall, seeing it away from C:\Program Files is suspicious, excepting the cases when you installed it into another directory by yourself.

What is cryptomining?

Cryptomining is a process of calculating the cryptocurrency transaction hash. Certain amounts of the transactions (differs from one cryptocurrency to another) form the block – a structure part of the blockchain. Calculating the hash is not an easy task – it requires serious multi-thread calculating power. And the result (mining premium) depends on the speed of your calculations. That’s why professional miners almost exclusively use so-called cryptomining farms – dozens of computer systems with a specific – ideal for mining – configuration.²

Fraudsters, on the other hand, decided not to spend thousands of dollars purchasing these mining computers. Their idea is to infect hundreds and thousands of computers with mining software, connect them into a single network, and receive all of the profit from this operation. Monero is one of the best coins for fraudsters, because of the calculation simplicity and relatively high price. XMRig, correspondingly, is just a suitable tool for this purpose. They can take any other program which can mine Monero, or develop their own.

How could I get the XMRig malware?

If you have never touched cryptomining before, there is no way to get this program in a normal way. Downloading it from the official website, or from GitHub, must be 100% intended. Meanwhile, there are tons of different ways of illegal installation of that program on your PC. Generally, the most popular ways to spread malicious miners are online banners, email spam and pirated applications.

Example of malvertising

Online banners, exactly, their variants that sometimes are called “malvertising”, have the biggest share of coin miners spreading. Disgusting blinking ads with dubious contents will likely force you to search the “X” to close it, but this crossing can be just absent. In rare cases, you can just misclick, and malware will be downloaded to your PC. This or other way, it is always better to avoid interacting with ads on the Internet.

Email spam messages, together with pirated programs, contain the virus inside of the file. In the case of email, the file is attached to the message. To say clearly, you receive not the exact malware, but a script, which then downloads the malware. But this is too long to explain there. And what is the difference, if you will still get your hardware overloaded?

The typical example of a bait email

How do I remove XMRig from my PC?

That’s no matter how did it appear on your PC if you still do not want it to exist in your system. High CPU usage makes your computer impossible to use for any other task, so removing it with a proper tool is the best choice. GridinSoft Anti-Malware is the one that will easily wipe out the miner and fix the software changes it did to your OS.

Download GridinSoft Anti-Malware

Why GridinSoft Anti-Malware? Microsoft Defender is rather good at scanning, but almost useless for malware removal. Because of the bugs in its code, it sometimes even struggles to start an on-demand scanning. That’s why it is better to have a third-party and workable solution, than to rely on the Defender.

Removing the threat with GridinSoft Anti-Malware

Run the setup file.

When setup file has finished downloading, double-click on the setup-antimalware-fix.exe file to install GridinSoft Anti-Malware on your system.

An User Account Control asking you about to allow GridinSoft Anti-Malware to make changes to your device. So, you should click “Yes” to continue with the installation.

Press “Install” button.

Once installed, Anti-Malware will automatically run.

Wait for the Anti-Malware scan to complete.

GridinSoft Anti-Malware will automatically start scanning your system for XMRig file and other malicious programs. This process can take a 20-30 minutes, so I suggest you periodically check on the status of the scan process.

Click on “Clean Now”.

When the scan has finished, you will see the list of infections that GridinSoft Anti-Malware has detected. To remove them click on the “Clean Now” button in right corner.

If the guide doesn’t help you to remove XMRig infection, please download the GridinSoft Anti-Malware that I recommended. Also, you can always ask me in the comments for getting help. Good luck!