14 DAY TRIAL // Crypto-currencies have become an economy of their own, and some of the crooks trying to generate this type of digital money have resorted to somewhat illegal tactics in order to boost their revenues at the expense of others.
According to recent reports, an unknown actor is secretly bundling the VNLGP Miner software with various types of free applications.
In industry terms, these programs are called PUPs, and most of them are adware, being usually focused on sneakily displaying ads to users, either on their desktops, inside other apps, or in their browsers.
VNLGP Miner avoids computers with AV software and low-end GPUs
VNLGP Miner is different, though, mainly because it's not focused on ads at all, but on crypto-currency mining, as its name hints.
The mining software gets bundled with other applications, usually offered for free, and most of the users won't even notice its installation until searching their computer's list of installed applications.
The good news is that VNLGP won't install on all computers. During the installation procedure, the miner will check the local computer for a list of 18 antivirus programs and the presence of a high-end GPU card.
If the miner finds an antivirus or a low-end graphics card, VNLGP's installation will be aborted.
Once infected, a victim's GPU usage will skyrocket to 70%
The bad news is that once a suitable target is found, the adware immediately starts to mine for crypto-currencies, and more exactly, the Decred crypto-currency, one of Bitcoin's most recent spawns.
It does so by connecting with the "miner" username on the poolminers.com mining platform.
Since mining for any crypto-currency is a resource-heavy process, the user's GPU card, which VNLGP Miner uses to perform complex mathematical computations, will immediately start to work at high capacity.
Programmatically, VNLGP Miner prevents the GPU card from going over 70 percent of the graphics card's capacity to avoid damage or the user suspecting anything array. Nevertheless, computers will start to behave erratically, consume lots of electrical power, and emanate a lot of heat.