Which anti-virus can detect crypto miners?

Hi everyone,

As the title says, I'd like to know your opinions on which AV program to use (free versions only) to detect crypto miners.

The reason I'm asking for this is that ever since I installed Windows 10 on my computer (about 2 years ago), I have always wanted not to use any AV program anymore, even if it's free. And I haven't. But over the last year or so I've noticed that as soon as I go to sleep (I keep my PC turned on during the night for weeks on end), not even 3-4 minutes into the PC - supposedly - going idle, it starts processing intensely, and having just read about the ease of having miners (hidden little pieces of software) secretly mine cryptocurrencies when your PC is idle worries me that I might have gotten 1 or 2 of these little buggers, especially since I have no AV program installed.

Now, my computer is pretty shitty (I don't even have an SSD, just an old 7200 RPM Toshiba HDD of 1 TB capacity), not to mention the 2013 old i3 and 660 GTX CPU and GPU components. You just can not mine anything with this type of hardware, but... when paranoia hits you gotta do what paranoia asks

So anyway, can I please get a recommendation on what the best AV is for detecting miners? I know that most AV programs on the market today are equally good (or equally bad, depending on which angle you analyze them from) at detecting the most common viruses, but I'm not interested in detecting common viruses, even if I might have them. I am specifically interested in crypto miners. So, what do you recommend?

Also, as a side question: how good is Malware Bytes? I am genuinely fascinated with this software for some reason that I can't explain, and at just $19 per year I'm heavily considering buying it. But only if it's one or two levels above the other AV programs on the market today (AVG, Kaspersky, Avast, etc). So, what can you tell me (good AND bad) about MB?

PS: to mods: please move this thread to the appropriate sub-forum cause I didn't know where to put it. Thanks!

I think a conventional antivirus is able to detect this. Anyway what I can recommend are browser extensions like uBlock Origin and minerBlock for prevention

Monzani said:

I think a conventional antivirus is able to detect this. Anyway what I can recommend are browser extensions like uBlock Origin and minerBlock for prevention

Click to expand...

must it absolutely be uBlock Origin, or will any ad blocker do? Because I do have ghostery and ublocker installed?

I will have to check out minerBlock, though. Thanks for the suggestion

Use the task manager to see if there are suspicious processes or services running in the background.
MalwareBytes is good, even the free version, but pretty much any antivirus is able to detect crypto miners. Just make sure to not install Norton, as it has a built-in crypto miner itself.
As the other user said, use an ad blocker. I would recommend uBlock Origin or Adblock Plus.
You can also use Brave browser. It has a built-in ad blocker, many privacy features, and you can earn a small amount of crypto by using it (don't worry, not though mining).

R4v3nbl4ck said:

Use the task manager to see if there are suspicious processes or services running in the background.

Click to expand...

I'm not tech-savvy, so I have no clue what I should see / not see in there. But I did have a look at those processes 2 days ago, and I recognized a few of them but others I have no idea what they do, so I chose not to mess with them

R4v3nbl4ck said:

Just make sure to not install Norton, as it has a built-in crypto miner itself.

Click to expand...

LMAO is this for real? I mean, I'm not a fan of Norton so I won't use it anyway, but wtf?? How can it have crypto miner and still exist on the market???

R4v3nbl4ck said:

You can also use Brave browser. It has a built-in ad blocker, many privacy features, and you can earn a small amount of crypto by using it (don't worry, not though mining).

Click to expand...

been using Brave since last year, and yeah I know about BAT, I started earning it 3 weeks ago, but it's not very rewarding (I haven't even gotten $1 yet). But I'll keep using it for a few months to see what it amounts to.

tazarbm said:

I'm not tech-savvy, so I have no clue what I should see / not see in there. But I did have a look at those processes 2 days ago, and I recognized a few of them but others I have no idea what they do, so I chose not to mess with them
LMAO is this for real? I mean, I'm not a fan of Norton so I won't use it anyway, but wtf?? How can it have crypto miner and still exist on the market???
been using Brave since last year, and yeah I know about BAT, I started earning it 3 weeks ago, but it's not very rewarding (I haven't even gotten $1 yet). But I'll keep using it for a few months to see what it amounts to.

Click to expand...

If you are not 100% sure what you're doing with the task manager, forget it.
Yes, it's real. It's preinstalled. You get to keep part of the mined crypto, and the other part goes to them.
Go to the rewards setting and set the maximum ads per hour to 10 (default is 5). I usually earn like $3 per month.

R4v3nbl4ck said:

If you are not 100% sure what you're doing with the task manager, forget it.
Yes, it's real. It's preinstalled. You get to keep part of the mined crypto, and the other part goes to them.
Go to the rewards setting and set the maximum ads per hour to 10 (default is 5). I usually earn like $3 per month.

Click to expand...

it is set at 10 ads per hour, but I still get like 6-15 per day (I guess it depends on the number of advertisers)

Also, I forgot to ask in the previous reply, does it really matter whether I have uBlock origin or something else?? Because I've been using the same ad blocker for years and I've never had issues with / because of it. What's so different between ublock origin and my blocker?

And what’s wrong with windows defender?

K-One said:

And what’s wrong with windows defender?

Click to expand...

I don't know, but if it was good it would probably detect something as insidious as crypto miners. Windows defender has been scanning my computer daily for the last 2 years and it never finds anything wrong with it. And yet, few minutes after I turn the monitor off and got to sleep the computer always starts sounding like a tractor, albeit a silent one. But still... that sound is not normal, and I'd like to know with 100% certainty what's causing it. And Windows defender hasn't be able to tell me yet

Delphy said:

Task Manager mate.

Click to expand...

Me and the TM are not the best of friends, so I'd rather not mess with it

switch to a mac

b1step-ahead said:

switch to a mac

Click to expand...

why?