Coinminers - Background running offline ???

jimbo45 · 31 Jul 2018

Hi there
can these coinminers or whatever they are called run in the background even when you are offline.

From what I gather these are algorithms so presumably there's a lot of mathematical stuff they can do without needing to be connected to the Internet.

Is this true or do you actually need to be connected to Internet for these things to actually do their business -- of course eventually the "target account" must be loaded with any bit coins generated - that's another issue though.

If these things can run 100% offline do current A/V programs work to root these out.

Cheers
jimbo

essenbe · 31 Jul 2018

Jimbo, I don't think I can answer your question about offline activity, although my inclination would be no. Did you see the thread we have about protecting yourself from the miners? Protecting yourself from In-Browser Miners Solved - Windows 10 Forums

TairikuOkami · 31 Jul 2018

jimbo45 said:

If these things can run 100% offline do current A/V programs work to root these out.

That depends, since they are not malicious by nature. People run them willingly, just like researching cancer.

Invisible resource thieves: The increasing threat of cryptocurrency miners Microsoft Secure

Coinminer protection and removal with Symantec Endpoint Protection

While some administrators may not consider coinminers a priority because the threat is not inherently destructive, the wasted resources and impact on performance is still viewed as a nuisance.

Plankton · 31 Jul 2018

The ones to watch out for are the ones that hijack your browser and run silently with out your knowledge regardless if the browser is open or not.

jimbo45 · 31 Jul 2018

Hi there.

That doesn't address the problem of programs running silently in the background when you are disconnected from the internet and therefor not using a browser. Most decent A/V software can (or should be able to) detect browser hijack attempts but ostensibly a seemingly innocent running background process is a lot harder to detect -- say the program decided to call itself excel.exe - how would A/V software detect that that particular piece of software was malevolent or foreign in origin.

Cheers
jimbo

simrick · 31 Jul 2018

jimbo45 said:

Hi there
can these coinminers or whatever they are called run in the background even when you are offline.

Theoretically, yes.
network - Can the Bitcoin Miner run offline? - Bitcoin Stack Exchange

You cannot earn Bitcoins mining unless you either add blocks to the blockchain or cooperate with others to do so. Without being online, you wouldn't know the current head of the blockchain (or any information based on it), so there's no way you could actually do either of those things. You could hash all you want, but you would never mine a block nor contribute towards mining one, so there wouldn't really be any reason to do so.

Yes you can, but the whole point of hashing is to share the results with the blockchain which can only be done while online. Without sharing results there is a very big chance you are calculating the wrong transactions--transactions which have already been hashed by someone else.
It would be like mining gold inside a mountain but never bringing it to the surface. Why bother?

jimbo45 · 31 Jul 2018

HI there

@simrick

Thanks.

Guess I never understood how these things work -- that's why I'm still typing Posts and not drinking Scotch (or beer etc) with 2 nice ladies at my side on a nice Yacht in the glorious sunshine in a Monaco Marina!!!

Cheers
jimbo