Idle Buddy

Idle Buddy might not look dangerous at all, but research conducted by malware researchers working at pcthreat.com has clearly shown that it cannot be trusted. Speaking more specifically, it is known to be a cryptocurrency miner. In other words, it is not a legitimate application. Instead, it has been developed by cyber criminals so that they could earn extra money. Idle Buddy has been categorized as a Trojan infection not only because it mines digital currency on affected computers, but also because it manages to infiltrate computers illegally. This also explains why so many users do not even suspect that they have this threat active on their system until they find a suspicious file in a random directory or an unknown process in Task Manager. Of course, these are not the only symptoms showing that the entrance of Idle Buddy was successful. Read the next paragraph to find out more about this Trojan infection and how to detect it on the system. If you read the report till the end, you will also find out how to delete this infection.

The first sign showing that Idle Buddy has infiltrated the computer is the presence of the following files/processes: IdleBuddy, ibservice.exe, xmrig.exe, and code86.exe. If you can locate at least one of them, there is a 99% possibility that the cryptocurrency miner is working on your computer. There are other signs that might tell you about the installation of Idle Buddy. Since this infection mines cryptocurrency using affected computer’s resources, you might notice that your computer’s speed has decreased. Because of this, it might be impossible to use certain programs and perform normal activities, for example, speedily open favorite websites. On top of that, your computer might freeze and become unresponsive quite often. Cyber criminals will not give you a share, so delete Idle Buddy from your system mercilessly. According to our experts, the chances are high that this Trojan has been developed to mine Bitcoin primarily, but it seems that it might be used to mine Monero and other popular digital currencies as well. It will not stop mining cryptocurrency on your computer itself, we can assure you, so take action today. We cannot promise that it will be a piece of cake to delete it because it is not an ordinary application that has an uninstaller.

Specialists at pcthreat.com do not have much information about the distribution of Idle Buddy because it is a relatively new malicious application that has not affected many computers yet. Even though not much information is available, our researchers suspect that users might download this Trojan infection from a P2P or another dubious website themselves expecting that they could use it to earn some money. Also, it might travel bundled with other programs. Third, it might be distributed via spam emails. Malicious applications usually travel as attachments in spam emails, so you should never open spam emails and attachments they hold. Finally, users might initiate the automatic download and installation of malware by clicking on malicious links found on the web. There are many different ways how malware can infiltrate users’ computers, so the first thing you should do after erasing Idle Buddy from your computer is installing security software on it. Only a 100% trustworthy antimalware scanner could prevent malware from entering your system, so do not trust the first scanner found on a random file-sharing website.

The Idle Buddy removal will not be something very easy because this infection does not have an uninstaller and, because of this, you will need to find and delete all its components yourself. We do not know where they are all located too, so you should check Desktop, Temporary Files, and Downloads and delete all suspicious/unknown .exe files first. In addition, you should inspect the Startup folder. If you cannot locate any components that belong to Idle Buddy, perform an in-depth system scan with an antimalware scanner. Do not even think about using the tool already installed on the system – it is 100% untrustworthy if it allowed the Trojan infection to enter the system unnoticed.

Idle Buddy removal guide

1. Open Task Manager (tap Ctrl+Shift+Esc).
2. Kill processes related to Idle Buddy using Task Manager (they might use the following names: IdleBuddy, ibservice.exe, xmrig.exe, and code86.exe).
3. Open Windows Explorer (tap Win+E).
4. Open %USERPROFILE%\Desktop, %TEMP%, and %USERPROFILE%\Downloads.
5. Inspect all files that can be found in these directories and remove unknown .exe files (possible filenames: IdleBuddy, ibservice.exe, xmrig.exe, and code86.exe).
6. Check %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup and %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Start Menu\Programs\Startup.
7. Disable suspicious Startup items and save the changes.
8. Empty Recycle bin.