Trojan.BitCoinMiner identifies a program that either silently installs, or functions as, a specialized mining program (miner) and uses the computer's physical resources (memory, processing power, etc) to generate units of a virtual or digital cryptocurrency.
Based on the settings of your F-Secure security product, it will either automatically delete, quarantine or rename the detected program or file, or ask you for a desired action.
Security programs will sometimes unintentionally identify a clean program or file as malicious if its code or behavior is similar to a known harmful program or file. This is known as a False Positive. In most cases, a False Positive is fixed in a subsequent database release.
Usually, updating your F-Secure security product to use the latest database is enough to resolve the issue. You can check by first updating your F-Secure security product to use the latest detection database updates, then rescanning the file.
After checking, if you still believe the file is incorrectly detected, you can submit a sample of it to F-Secure Labs for re-analysis.
NOTE If the file was moved to quarantine, you will need to first collect the file from quarantine before you can submit it.
If you are certain that the file is safe and want to continue using it, you can exclude it from further scanning by the F-Secure security product.
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Submit a file or URL for further analysis.
A trojan is usually deliberately designed by its author to appear authentic and attractive. For example, it may appear to be a screensaver, a service pack, an application update and so on. Once installed or opened, the trojan may perform its promised function, or display a decoy document to distract the user. In the background however, it also silently performs unauthorized actions (its payload), without the user's knowledge or consent.
Programs identified as Trojan.BitCoinMiners can either function as a miner, or install a separate component that can do so. Malware that use miners as part of their payload are essentially hijacking a user's resources to create cryptocurrency units for the malware author's benefit.
A cryptocurrency is an anonymous, decentralized form of digital currency, which can be used online as a medium of exchange much like traditional, physical currencies. Multiple cryptocurrencies exist, such as BitCoin, Ethereum and Monero.
Cryptocurrency units can be created by any user with specialized mining programs or miners that run the necessary mathematical calculations. Examples of mining programs include Coinhive, Cryptoloot, Electrum, Hashflare and MinerGate, though there are dozens of other similar programs available online.
The 'crypto' part of the term refers to the use of cryptography both for creating the currency units and for securing transactions made with the units. Because of the anonymity provided by cryptocurrency, its legality and acceptance varies considerably between countries.