How to Get Rid of Cortana Runtime Broker CPU Miner Virus

Many different malware programs capable of being inserted in your system to engage in cryptocurrency mining have been reported in the past.

But one of the most dangerous ones is making its rounds now—it is called the Cortana Runtime Broker CPU Miner Virus.

This virus is considered very dangerous because very few users may be able to realize that their system is infected.

Secondly, it is capable of practically destroying your system completely if it is not de tected, isolated and killed.

The Cortana Runtime Broker CPU Miner Virus Explained

In order to fully comprehend the magnitude of the risk this virus brings to your computer, one must look at three distinct aspects—How it makes entry into your symptoms, the symptoms and signals of an attack, and what kind of havoc it can create.

According to cybersecurity experts, some of the ways this Trojan virus can gain access to your system are via adult content sites, dubious links promising updates to software installed on your system, freeware installers and even spam emails.

The worrying aspect in the case of spam emails is that the attachment may look legitimate, such as a typical HTML or TXT file extension, which will give you very little indication that the attachment could be carrying malware.

After you open these unwanted attachments, they may sound meaningless; you either won’t be able to read the contents or even if you read, they may make no sense at all.

You will simply close it and move ahead. But the Trojan has already made its entry and will lodge itself inside your systems and start its work.

You may keep using your computer without knowing that the malware has infiltrated it.

Your device could slow down dramatically and every command you initiate may take much longer to get executed than it used to earlier.

There could be sporadic ads appearing on your screen when you are connected to the internet and you may find yourself being redirected to malicious websites even if you haven’t click on anything.

And the resultant damage could be even more devastating; it is capable of disabling many routine functions within your computer.

The malware can destroy your registry and most importantly, it could permit unknown entities to view and enter your computer and steal personal data.

Ways to Remove the Cortana Runtime Broker CPU Miner Virus

Now, as with all crypto miners, you would want to get rid of this virus as soon as possible.

Experts suggest two methods for doing this. One is an automatic process, where you may download and run an antivirus package and hope that it will detect and remove the malware.

But the other manual way might be the safer and better option. If you are not so sure of handling these steps, you can always seek some professional help from someone who is familiar with handling computer software.

First: The Automatic Process

1. You will have to reboot your system in “Safe” mode.
2. For this, on your Windows 10 device, hold the SHIFT key pressed and choose the Restart option from the Power button which you use regularly for shutting down.
3. Once this is done, you have to reach the Task Manager by pressing simultaneously the CTRL, SHIFT and ESC keys.
4. There will be a tab “Processes.” Click on it to find the different processes working on your system.
5. You may have an idea which of these looks suspicious. You can just end the process right there.
6. In other cases, go to the entry, right-click on it and then click on Open File Location.
7. If you have an antivirus software installed on your system, use it to scan each of these files
8. If the AV finds any file containing viruses, first End the Process and then remove the folder in which the file is located.

These steps may be enough to get rid of the Cortana Runtime Broker CPU Miner Virus. However, the general understanding is no antivirus is powerful enough to detect all available viruses. You may have to do a few more tasks to be absolutely sure you have removed the Cortana Runtime Broker CPU Miner Virus.

Other Steps for Your Security

You can reach the Control Panel and see if you can find any dubious looking entries there. If so, uninstall them.

Be careful to read through any warning that pops up when you ask a program to be uninstalled. Once you are sure the entry is suspicious, click on the button that leads to the removal of that entry.

You can use the System Configuration to check for any unusual presence of files. On the Search window, type “msconfig” and click “Enter.”

Again, if you find entries here that say “Unknown” under Manufacturer, just delete them.

Now, there is one last thing you could do to know if your system stands hacked. For this, you need to run a check with the following entry: notepad %windir%/system32/Drivers/etc/hosts.

A resultant Notepad Window will show some details and right at the bottom would be the listing of the IP address.

Only your IP address should appear. If there are more, then a remote computer is connected to yours. You can call up your cybersecurity service provider to come and help solve the issue.

Trojans are indeed the most dangerous of all viruses since hackers deploy them to perform all kinds of tasks to achieve their ends of causing maximum damage to their victims’ computers.

That’s why it’s important to remove the Cortana Runtime Broker CPU Miner Virus as soon as possible if your system has been infected with it.