Just because he wanted to hack the game, my brother was infected with cryptocurrency mining malware and ruined his laptop like this

I have a cousin who entered middle school last year. At that time, my aunt asked me to buy a laptop - partly for my son's gift, partly for my studies.

I chose to buy the HP Elitebook 8470p at a shop specializing in used laptop business for about 8 million VND. The reason I chose this machine is due to the limited budget, but more importantly its configuration (Core i5-3320M chip, 8GB RAM, 128GB SSD) is more than enough to serve the "office" tasks. and study " - quote from my aunt. With such a simple need, spending more money does not bring much benefit.

Unexpected surprise serial

Yet, just one year later, I received a phone call from her saying, "What's wrong with that device, please watch it for me!"

At that time, I felt quite surprised. Elitebook is HP's most advanced and highly durable device - something that has been tested by many people. So, why does it break so quickly, especially when it is only used for "office and study" ?

And I was more surprised when I got the device back in my hand after a year away.

I was surprised to see its awful form. On the cover of the machine appears patchy, flaking paint. Some of my friends have used this model for 3-4 years, but never a phenomenon like this has happened. I do not know what created these marks: due to sweaty hands or overheating?

I was surprised to see that the Space Bar key was warped. Again - I don't understand what happened this much.

I was surprised to open the cooling fan and saw a large piece of dust blocking the heat sink. Surprisingly, when I bought this device a year ago, I asked the cleaning staff to clean it very well - knowing that its future owner would not have time to take to the toilet during later life cycle.

And I was surprised to find that the device has a full battery, Windows reported not being able to charge (Not Charging). Just unplug the power, the machine will immediately collapse. With an old laptop like this, the battery bottle machine is very normal - but if the bottle to the level can not be used for a second after only 1 year, it is indeed "unbelievable".

Update: After being diagnosed by the technicians, this error is actually due to the charging IC burning and unable to maintain the device's power anymore. The battery of the device is still normal, although also has been significantly bottle.

What happened?

The blood of "detectives" inside me surfaced, and I decided to find out what the cause of this "disaster" was - because obviously, I didn't want it to happen again. Some of my questions are somewhat explained when I saw the Steam icon in the Start Menu."Well, it turned out not just to learn but to plow the game" - I broke.

However, I only really take a peek at the antivirus history of Microsoft Security Essentials:

With a very clear name: Trojan: Win32 / CoinMiner! Bit, this machine has been infected with malware. If you do not know, malware mining cryptocurrency (also known as a miner) was born to "plow" virtual currency to bad guys and cause infected machines to operate at full capacity.

The problem is that the source of the infection is not caused by accidental, ignorant users, but purposely. The executable file for the malicious code is named qc64.exe and is located in the ToolGunny folder.

Learn more, qc64.exe is an "attachment" programmer "promotion" with the hacked version of the game Gunny. Even on Youtube, there is even a video about this.

Cryptocurrency mining malware: When software can completely damage the hardware

Thus, we can temporarily conclude that the laptop was broken due to overwork. Besides gaming, the fact that it has to "carry" the virtual currency, pushing the CPU to 100% for a long time has made it hard to withstand.

In the past, many people used to laugh whenever someone asked if software could damage the hardware. In addition to the case of the CIH virus that occurred 20 years ago, it is theoretically difficult for software to damage hardware.

However, with the explosion of cryptocurrencies, this risk is becoming ever greater. However, money is still the motive of many hackers: if the malicious code steals bank account information, credit cards are too common, nowadays, mining virtual money is also a way they are used to do. for yourself.

I checked the hack tool's website and found that the latest version of it had nearly 45,000 downloads. Thus, it can be predicted that tens of thousands of computers are plowing at full capacity. Remember - this is only the malware inside this hack tool, and if you count all the malware, the number of infected computers will certainly be much bigger.

In the case of my laptop, the only part of it that was broken was the charging IC, and fortunately the repair cost was only a few hundred thousand. But, how many other computers are out there, how will their fate be? Having to dig coins for a long time, especially for machines with simple heat sinks and having discrete GPUs, will make them seriously degraded and the cost of repairing is very high. Even previously recorded cases of broken smartphones, batteries bulge to the point of explosion just because of malicious code plowing.

Hackers are getting more and more sophisticated ways to mine virtual currencies with users' computers. Besides directly infecting the system, some websites also insert code snippets to dig right into the browser. Even if a user's computer is "clean" of a virus, they can become a victim if they visit such websites. This is becoming a big problem that users need to be very vigilant.

Lessons learned

1. Don't hack in the game - whether the hack tool has "attached" malicious code or not. Please respect the rules of the game and treat it like a game.

2. Know the power and energy of your laptop. Do not force it to do non-productive tasks for it, such as playing heavy games on an office laptop for example. Keep an eye on the temperature to avoid overheating. Regular cleaning to increase heat dissipation efficiency and extend the life of the device.

3. Use good antivirus software to avoid malware infection. On web browsers, installing ad blocking software like uBlock Origin will also help prevent some malicious code from working.