Coins
Overview
There is no single, specific malware family universally referred to as "coins." Instead, the term is frequently used by security vendors as a descriptor for entire categories of malicious software that focus on cryptocurrency. This most commonly refers to "Coinminers" (or cryptojackers) that hijack a victim's computer resources (CPU, RAM, or GPU) to mine cryptocurrencies like Monero without consent. It may also refer to Cryptocurrency Stealers, which are designed to locate and steal existing crypto assets by targeting wallet.dat files, hijacking clipboard contents to replace wallet addresses during transactions, or logging keystrokes to steal seed phrases.
Generated Detections (Boilerplate)
These YARA and Sigma rules are auto-generated based on the family name and aliases. They must be heavily tuned before deployment in a production environment.
YARA Rule
rule MALWARE_WIN_COINS {
meta:
description = "Detects Coins (cryptominer)"
author = "SystemHelpdesk Boilerplate Generator"
date = "2026-07-06"
strings:
$s1 = "coins" ascii wide nocase
condition:
uint16(0) == 0x5a4d and any of them
}Sigma Rule
title: Suspicious Coins Activity
id: 68849520e7cb551715bb507436ec4605
status: experimental
description: Detects generic indicators of the coins malware family.
logsource:
category: process_creation
product: windows
detection:
selection:
Image|endswith:
- '\cmd.exe'
- '\powershell.exe'
CommandLine|contains:
- "*coins*"
condition: selection
level: mediumReferences & External Analysis
- Search "coins" on VirusTotal (External Analysis)
Frequently Asked Questions
What does the 'coins' malware label mean?
It is a generic category label used to describe malware that either steals existing cryptocurrency from wallets, or hijacks a computer's resources to mine new cryptocurrency for the attacker.
How does cryptojacking affect my computer?
Cryptominers often run silently in the background, significantly slowing down the victim's system, causing high CPU/GPU temperatures, and increasing electricity consumption.
How do cryptocurrency stealers work?
They may search your hard drive for wallet files, monitor your clipboard to swap out legitimate wallet addresses with the attacker's address when you copy/paste, or log your keystrokes to steal passwords.
How do I remove the Coins Cryptominer from Windows?
Manual removal of Coins is highly discouraged as it may leave persistence mechanisms intact. We recommend disconnecting the device from the internet and utilizing a professional incident response service or enterprise-grade EDR software to conduct a full forensic sweep.
Is Coins a virus or a Cryptominer?
Coins is classified as a Cryptominer. Unlike traditional viruses that infect files, modern malware like Coins typically operates as a standalone payload designed to compromise systems, steal data, or deploy secondary stage implants.
What are the main symptoms of a Coins infection?
Symptoms of Coins can include unexpected system slowness, unauthorized outbound network traffic to unknown IP addresses, disabled security software, and suspicious background processes running from AppData or Temp directories.
Related Families (Category: cryptominer)
Explore other malware families in the same category:
Protect Your Network Against Cryptominers
Want to prevent Coins and similar threats from compromising your organization? Read our comprehensive defensive guide: Cryptominer Protection Guide.
Machine-readable
Get this profile as JSON: https://jordan123234-malware-families-explorer.static.hf.space/api/coins.json
Ecosystem & Interactive Environments
This profile is part of the Malware Families Catalog, a public dataset of 2,899 malware families. The catalog is also published across our ecosystem: Hugging Face, Kaggle, Zenodo, Replit, StackBlitz, CodeSandbox, and CodePen.