This article has been created to explain what is the Coinhive Miner virus and to show how you can remove the Coinhive Miner Trojan from your Mac.
A familiar Trojan using one of the most notorious miner pools, called Coinhive has been detected to infect Mac systems. The Trojan is unique in the fact that It uses JavaScript to conduct mining operations for the anonymous cryptocurrency Monero on victim machines. The result of that is that the resources on the victimized Mac become occupied with mining activity which slows it down and overheats its components. This is why if you believe that your Mac has been affected by the Coinhive miner, we recommend that you read this article thoroughly in order to learn how you can try and remove the Coinhive miner Trojan from your Mac effectively.
Threat Summary
| Name | Coinhive Miner |
| Type | Coin Miner Trojan for Mac OS |
| Short Description | The end goal of this malware is to mine for the Cryptocurrency Monero, using your Mac’s CPU and GPU resources. |
| Symptoms | Having this malware on your Mac, results in elevated CPU and GPU usage by it’s malicious processes. If it remains on your computer for longer periods of time, the virus may even break your computer’s components. |
| Distribution Method | Spam Emails, Email Attachments, Executable files |
| Detection Tool | See If Your System Has Been Affected by Coinhive Miner Download Combo Cleaner | User Experience | Join Our Forum to Discuss Coinhive Miner. |
Coinhive Miner – How Does It Infect
To infect computers, the Coinhive Trojan uses methods no different than what any other crypto miner would employ. The malware may infect your Mac as a result of you having to download a suspicious installer, license activation software, fake portable program, malicious Microsoft Office or other documents and simply starting them. These files may come uploaded on Torrent sites or by being set as the download you are looking for on suspicious and compromised WordPress websites.
Another very widespread method by which the Coinhive Miner may spread onto your Mac is via e-mail. Usually, viruses, like the Coinhive miner Trojan may be coming as an e-mail attachment tht poses as a legitimate document of great improtance and the end goal of such malspam e-mails is to convince you, the vicitm, to open the attachment. Usually the files that are most widely used to mask the malicious origin of this virus are:
- Receipt of a purchase.
- Invoice.
- Document from your company.
- Document from a big company.
- Document from a bank.
- Report of a problem with your account on a website you may be registered in.
These messages are masked in a very clever way. Below you can see an example of such malicious e-mail:
We could not deliver your parcel, #00000739097
FedEx 2Day A.M.
Sent: Tuesday, August 18. 2015 at 3:14 AM
To: Contact
Attached file: Delivery_Notification_00000739097.dmg (2.5 KB)
Dear Customer,
we could not deliver your parcel.
You can review complete details of your order in the find attached.
warm regards,
Marshall Hampton,
Sr. Operation Agent.
Coinhive Miner Trojan – What Does It Do
When the Coinhive Miner trojan infects your mac, the virus may immediately drop it’s payload on it. The payload may consist of the main infection file of the virus and other sub-infection files. Once dropped the miner may request your permissions to activate it while being masked as a legitimate program or a document.
Once an infection is triggered, the Coinhive Miner Trojan may run a “com” process in your Mac’s activity monitor and this process may be hidden or may start to appear. Once this is done, the miner may overtake a significant percentage of your CPU and GPU (Video Card and Central Processor) in order to perform the calculation of hashes that are needed to miner cryptocurrencies. You may immediately notice a decrease of your Mac’s performance as a result of the Coinhive Miner being active and your Mac may even freeze.
The malicious executable file, that belongs to the Coinhive Miner Trojan may establish a connection to the Coinhive network and as a result of that may begin the minig operation on your Mac by listing its IP address in the mining pool. Once a reward for the mining is accredited, it immediately goes to the wallets of the cyber-crimilas and the more Macs and computers they infect, the more Monero coins they are able to mine, while taking illegal advantage of your machine, without your permission or approval.
And this is not the only risk, associated with the Coinhive Miner Trojan, because it may also use spyware elements to obtain information from your Mac, such as:
- Your financial credentials.
- Your network and system details.
- Your passwords.
And furthermore, since the Coinhive miner virus is also a Trojan, it may perform other activities as well, like;
- Install other cryptocurrency miners.
- Update itself to remain hidden for longer periods of time on your Mac.
- Collect the keys you type on your Mac.
- Collect your IP address, network, antivirus and other information.
Remove Coinhive Miner Malware from Your Mac
Before starting to remove this miner virus from your Mac, we recommend that you backup all your important files, because with malware, as dangerous as this one, you never know what will happen.
To remove the Coinhive miner virus from your Mac, we recommend that you follow the manual or automatic removal instructions underneath this article. They have been created to help explain how you can remove this miner virus from your Mac based on your knowledge and malware removal experience. If manual removal does not seem to help, we would advise you what most experts will and that is to download and run a scan on your Mac, using an advanced anti-malware software. Such tools are created to thoroughly scan your Mac for any malware and remove all of its related files and objects. These types of anti-malware apps are also created to keep your Mac healthy and protected in the future as well.
Manually delete Coinhive Miner from your Mac
Remove a toolbar from Mozilla Firefox
Remove a toolbar from Google Chrome
Remove an extension from Safari and reset it.
Automatically remove Coinhive Miner from your Mac
When you are facing problems on your Mac as a result of unwanted scripts and programs such as Coinhive Miner, the recommended way of eliminating the threat is by using an anti-malware program. Combo Cleaner offers advanced security features along with other modules that will improve your Mac’s security and protect it in the future.
