MassMiner

What is MassMiner?

The online community has faced a considerable increase in cryptocurrency malware this year. As research has clearly shown, MassMiner is a computer threat that belongs to this category of malicious software as well. Since it enters computers illegally and works completely in the background, it usually takes time for users to find out about the successful entrance of this infection. The quickest and easiest way to find out about the entrance of MassMiner is, of course, scanning the system with an antimalware scanner, but it does not mean that it is impossible to do that without the special antimalware tool. You can find out whether or not this infection is installed on your computer by simply checking the C:\Windows\Temp\Networks directory. If you can locate a malicious executable file (taskmgr.exe) there, there is no doubt that you have encountered MassMiner. We expect you to take action immediately in such a case. In other words, you must delete this infection from your system as soon as possible because its presence will only result in serious problems. The threat is considered to be harmful malware, and, on top of that, research has shown that it is quite sophisticated. Consequently, its manual removal will not be anywhere near easy, but we are sure you will successfully remove it yourself if you first read this report and then use the manual removal guide specialists working at anti-spyware-101.com have prepared for less experienced users.

What does MassMiner do?

MassMiner is not an ordinary piece of malware for sure. It is both a worm and a cryptocurrency miner, as research has shown. Well, technically, it does not mine cryptocurrency itself. Instead, it drops a cryptocurrency miner to C:\Windows\Networks upon the successful entrance and then activates it to do the dirty job. Malware researchers say that a number of different versions of MassMiner exist, but they should all focus on cryptocurrency mining. Theoretically, cryptominers can be used to mine all kinds of cryptocurrencies, including Monero and Bitcoin, which are among the most popular ones in the world, but if we speak about MassMiner, it seems that it drops a cryptocurrency miner for mining Monero primarily because researchers have managed to find two Monero wallets that belong to attackers behind the MassMiner malware. If your computer is old, it might become extremely sluggish after the successful entrance of this threat. You might even realize that it is no longer possible to use certain programs and surf the Internet. Cryptocurrency mining without the user’s knowledge is not the only malicious activity MassMiner performs on affected computers. It has been observed that this threat might install Gh0st backdoor on the affected system as well. Of course, users are not informed about the installation of this infection too.

Where does MassMiner come from?

Let’s now turn to the distribution of MassMiner. The distribution methods used to spread it also show that this infection is a harmful computer threat. It not only spreads itself through various exploits, including SMB Exploit and WebServer Exploit, but it also performs a brute-force attack to gain access to Microsoft SQL Servers. Once inside the system, it immediately drops a cryptominer and copies itself to the Startup folder and creates some scheduled tasks for persistence. Additionally, it kills the Windows Firewall by executing the following command on the affected computer: cmd /c net stop MpsSvc. Last but not least, it modifies the settings of registry tracing to hide itself on the affected computer. This is one of the reasons it takes time for users to find out about its successful entrance. As you can see, MassMiner is a sophisticated computer threat that might cause you a lot of problems; however, it is definitely not the most harmful malware that exists. You might encounter a considerably more serious infection by keeping your system unprotected. You just need to install a reputable security application so that no other computer threats could slither onto the computer illegally again.

How to delete MassMiner

You must remove MassMiner immediately if it ever happens that you find out that you have it installed on your computer because this infection will perform only malicious activities and might even make it impossible to use the computer by using all its resources for cryptocurrency mining. It is always easier to delete malware automatically, but you can delete MassMiner manually too. Simply follow our instructions step by step. You can find them provided below this article.

MassMiner removal guide

1. Press Ctrl+Alt+Del and open Task Manager.
2. Under Processes, kill malicious processes representing MassMiner.
3. Close Task Manager.
4. Open Windows Explorer.
5. Go to %WINDIR%\Temp.
6. Delete the Networks folder with all the files it contains.
7. Delete the dllhost folder from %WINDIR%.
8. Go to %WINDIR%\Temp again.
9. Delete vmnat.exe and {random name}.king files.
10. Access %WINDIR%\System32\drivers.
11. Delete npf.sys.
12. Open %WINDIR%\SysWOW64.
13. Remove {random name}.bak and {random name}.exe files.
14. Remove Flash and Netframework tasks from %WINDIR%\System32 and %WINDIR%\Tasks (if exist).
15. Access Registry Editor (tap Win+R, type regedit, and click OK).
16. Delete the Value named Debugger from the registry keys listed below:

• HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Image File Execution Options\powershell.exe
• HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Image File Execution Options\wscript.exe
• HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Image File Execution Options\sethc.exe
• HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Image File Execution Options\magnify.exe
• HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Image File Execution Options\perfmon.exe

17. Remove all recently downloaded files.
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Stop these MassMiner Processes: