Norton Antivirus Built-in crypto miner It re-entered the public consciousness after a random Twitter blogger expressed annoyance about the difficulty of uninstalling.
Adding Ncrypt.exe (Norton 360’s signed cryptocurrency mining binary) to the installation of Norton Antivirus is nothing new-but it seems that it took months for non-technical people to realize it happened what.
Back in June, NortonLifeLock, the owner of the unpopular PC antivirus product, announced that it would offer Ethereum mining as part of its antivirus suite. Promotion of NortonLifeLock, as we reported, Is it true that those who are involved in cryptocurrency mining may not pay attention to security-so what better way than installing a cryptocurrency mining machine from a trusted consumer security brand?
In return for your voluntary installation of their encrypted miners on your home PC, NortonLifeLock only draws 15% of any digital currency you generate.Although this compares well with 100% income Criminals secretly deploy crypto miners Help yourself, some might say it’s a bit overkill for Norton’s minimal effort.
@norton @TheHackersNews @wired @Conderas @hacks4pancakes @SwiftOnSecurity
Norton is installing a cryptocurrency miner named Norton Crypto (NCrypt.exe) on the end user system, and there was no conversation during the installation of its security product.— Maxius (@mAxius) December 31, 2021
Other consumers scattered across the network complained that they found it difficult to uninstall Norton crypto miners.
We have asked Norton to comment and will update this article when we receive a response from the company.According to the company’s FAQ, this feature must be activated by the user, and Requires powerful hardware to meet its system requirements.
Crypto miners were flagged during the installation of Norton 360. Although well-documented consumers quickly clicked on the EULA, it is entirely possible for non-technical users to complain about the sudden slowness of the PC without knowing that they have a running crypto miner with their permission.
“If you have turned on Norton Crypto but don’t want to use it anymore, you can disable it through the Norton Crypto dashboard,” said common problem on Norton’s website. It seems that uninstalling it completely requires more persistence, and the user needs to disable Norton Product Tamper Protection (designed to protect antivirus products from being disabled or removed by malware) before performing the usual Windows uninstallation steps.
Norton is not alone: it was a Wi-Fi router manufacturer last year Offers mining of cryptocurrencies on user devices If they provide the connection to the public. ®
