A mining trojan is a type of malicious software that infects a victim's device to secretly mine cryptocurrency without their consent. Here's the processing process of a mining trojan:
- Infection: The trojan spreads through phishing emails, malicious downloads, or exploiting vulnerabilities in software. Once executed, it installs itself on the victim's device.
- Persistence: The trojan ensures it remains active by modifying system settings, creating scheduled tasks, or disguising itself as legitimate processes.
- Resource Hijacking: It hijacks the device's CPU, GPU, or other computing resources to perform cryptocurrency mining operations. This often leads to high CPU/GPU usage, overheating, and reduced performance.
- Mining Execution: The trojan connects to a mining pool or directly to a cryptocurrency network (e.g., Monero) to mine coins. The mined coins are sent to the attacker's wallet.
- Evasion: To avoid detection, the trojan may throttle mining activity, use rootkit techniques, or disable antivirus software.
Example: A user downloads a fake game installer from an untrusted website. The installer includes a mining trojan that silently starts mining Monero in the background, consuming 80% of the CPU and slowing down the system.
For businesses, Tencent Cloud offers Host Security (CWP) to detect and block mining trojans, along with Cloud Firewall and Web Application Firewall (WAF) to prevent malicious traffic and phishing attacks.