Is Your System Secretly Mining Bitcoin For Someone Else?steemCreated with Sketch.

in #bitcoin7 years ago

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A friend of mine complained to me about his computer going really slow as of late. Which honestly I don't think much of as any system over time get cluttered and littered with garbage that slows down the operating system. However what surprised me in the hours to follow was that his system was actually mining bitcoin for someone else without him even knowing!

What really stinks about this is that your system could be mining and sucking up huge amounts of power it would not be otherwise. If you have 2 graphics cards and a high end CPU you could be looking at a solid 500 + watts of extra power being used when your system is on and running because of this.

I wanted to create one of the most simplest ways to try and detect if maybe your system has become a victim of this and this is what I have come up with.

If you are running windows like most are and most that would be infected with such a "virus" then the most easy way to check for this is by seeing when your CPU and perhaps GPU useage is at over a given period of time.

Steps

  1. Press the windows key on your keyboard plus R
  2. On the prompt to run type in msconfig
  3. On the new window click on the startup tab
  4. Click on Open Task Manager
  5. Click on the Performance Tab

Now depending on what you are currently running and how good your system is your CPU usage should be 20% or less in most cases. If your browsing the web and looking at any videos etc or even when you first start up your system and everything has loaded you should be around 5% or less. If your seeing your CPU usage at a high level that is steady all the time you could possibly be infected. You can review the processes tab as well to see what current processes are running and see if one is at a constant high that looks unfamiliar to you.


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So this is very possible, I found it hard to believe but I will definitely check it out on my system to be sure its not mining for someone I don't know. Thanks for sharing

good question no other reason to explain the lag on some of these websites

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O wow! that is amazing!
i dint knew that someone could have so much power on your pC
Maybe he install a program by mistake and thats how the hacker found an easy way to access

The person who managed to secretely install the miner us a genius.

i do agree

I've heard there are also some viruses that mine cryptocurrencies in your browser. Can you use the same method to check for these? Thanks

Not just in your browser but websites can utilize javascript embedded in them to use your cpu while on that particular website.

Yup, Youll see jumps in your CPU usage that should not be there. Of course using ad blocks and virus scans can always help to prevent it but they don't catch everything. This method by checking your CPU usage seems pretty fool proof as its what is used to mine crypto

thank you very much. that is scary. I use linux, i think is it more safe. i check with top command

Yes i also think linux are more safe because you can control your computer better

I have a lot of brakes for more than a year. Now checked - CPU - 99 percent: (

Ouch yeah your CPU should almost never be at 99 percent unless its a really old system struggling with some software etc. Most of the time to clean out my system I just wipe the hard drive and install windows fresh again. its a bit easier to do with windows 10 compared to other versions of windows

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