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How to Identify Cryptojacking Malware?

There are several ways to identify the hidden crypto mining malware on our computer. We can either detect and identify that malware manually or by using the third-party antivirus or antimalware tools. These are the few ways to identify the cryptojacking malware on our computer.


Monitoring CPU usage

If we see unusual CPU usage behavior then our computer might be infected with cryptojacking malware. Usually, there won’t be much CPU usage when the computer is idle. We only see a spike in CPU usage when we are using heavy programs, so if we see high CPU usage on our computer when we are not using any programs on the computer then this might be the result of cryptojacking malware. We can manually monitor the CPU usage of our computer when we open any web browser or open any website. If the CPU usage is increasing when we open any website then there might be cryptojacking code on the website, we can then block those websites from being loaded on our computer. If we see high CPU usage when opening a browser or any other application, then this might be due to the hidden mining codes in that software. Monitoring CPU usage is one of the best ways to identify the cryptojacking malware.


Analyzing fan sound
One of the ways to detect crypto jacking malware is to monitor the CPU usage but checking CPU usage frequently might be impractical. Instead of checking CPU usage we can also check the sounds of a computer fan. If the computer is infected with cryptojacking then it will increase the CPU usage which will result on the increasing temperature of the CPU so the cooler fan of the computer will rotate rapidly making the sounds notable. If we can hear the loud noise of fan frequently then our computer might be infected with the cryptojacking malware. There are lots of fanless laptops and ultra-books available, also the mobile devices will not have a fan to cool down the CPU. For that kind of computers and mobile devices, we can monitor the temperature of CPU rather than monitoring the fan sound.

Analyzing the performance of the computer
If the computer is infected with crypto mining virus then one of the major symptoms is the slow performance. Since most of the CPU will be allocated for the mining purpose computer can’t handle the assigned task and the performance of the computer will reduce. If our computer started performing slowly suddenly then it can be the result of cryptojacking. When we open any website infected with mining malware it makes the browser and other application very slow. Sometime the browser might freeze due to high CPU usage by the application. With the modern operating system, we can see the CPU usage of individual tabs on the browser so if any tab is making the computer slower, the website opened in that page might be mining the cryptocurrency.

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