How to Detect and Remove a Miner on Xiaomi Phone: A Step-by-Step Guide

Xiaomi smartphones, thanks to their performance and availability, have become a popular target for hidden cryptocurrency mining. If your phone has become slower to work, overheat for no reason or quickly discharge, these can be signs that a miner is running on it. Unlike classic viruses, miners do not steal data, but they use the device’s resources to mine cryptocurrency in favor of attackers, which leads to battery wear and reduce the life of the processor.

In this article, we will discuss how to accurately determine the presence of a miner on Xiaomi (including the Redmi, POCO and Mi models), what tools to use to do this, and how to safely remove malware.

Signs of hidden mining on Xiaomi

Miners on mobile devices rarely give themselves out as obvious symptoms, but there are a number of indirect signs that should alert:

• 🔥 Overheating of the body even with minimal load (for example, while watching a video or simply scrolling through the feed of social networks).
• 🔋 A sharp reduction in battery life – if before the charge lasted the day, but now barely reaches the evening.
• ⚡ Unexplained traffic increase (check in Settings) → SIM-maps and mobile networks → Traffic).
• 🐢 Slowing down the interface, getting stuck when opening applications or returning to the home screen.
• 📊 High CPU load at rest (can be checked through Settings) → The phone. → Status of the system).

One of the surest signs is that the processor is active at night when the phone is lying idle, and if you find that the battery is dead in the morning, it's dead. 20-30% post 6-8 During downtime, it is an occasion to check the system for the presence of a miner, and it is also worth paying attention to unknown processes in the task manager, especially if their names contain random sets of letters and numbers (for example, the name of the task manager, com.abc123.xyz).

How to check Xiaomi phone for miner

Before you start a deep diagnosis, perform a basic check that will help identify the obvious signs of mining:

1. Check CPU load: Go to Settings → About Phone → System Status → CPU Use. At rest (when the phone is not in use), the load should not exceed 5-10%. If you see a constant load of 30-50%, this is an alarm signal.
2. Traffic Analysis: Open Settings → SIM-maps and mobile networks → Traffic and see which applications consume the most data. Miners are often masquerading as system services (e.g. com.android.system), but their traffic will be disproportionately high.
3. Temperature Check: Use the AIDA64 app (available on Google Play) to monitor the CPU temperature. If it exceeds 50°C in idle, it's not normal for Xiaomi.

If a basic check reveals anomalies, proceed to a deep diagnosis with the help of specialized tools.

Specialized tools for finding a miner

To accurately detect a miner on Xiaomi, it is recommended to use a combination of system tools and third-party applications.

Pay special attention to processes with names that include:

• 🔍 Miner, Coin, Crypto – Clear Signs of a Miner.
• 🔍 com.android. with random symbols – masking as system services.
• 🔍 update, service, helper – often used to hide malicious activity.

Critical: Some Xiaomi miners masquerade as legitimate system processes, such as com.miui.analytics or com.xiaomi.market. Before removing such processes, make sure they are not part of MIUI firmware, or you risk disrupting your phone.

Manual check through ADB: step-by-step instructions

If you're familiar with the command line, ADB is the most reliable way to identify hidden miners. Here's how to do it:

1. Install ADB on your PC (download Google’s Platform Tools).
2. Turn on USB Debugging on your phone: Settings → About Phone → MIUI version (click 7 times to activate Developer Mode), then go back to Settings → Additional → Developers → Debugging on USB.
3. Connect your phone to your PC and execute on the command line: Adb devices (should display your device).
4. Get a list of all running processes: adb shell ps -A | grep -i "mine\|coin\|crypto" If the output is not empty - there is a miner on the phone.
5. Check the network activity: Adb shell netstat -tuln Look for suspicious connections to the IP-addresses of mining pools (for example, stratum+tcp://).

If you find a suspicious process, write down its PID (identifier) and do:

adb shell cat /proc/[PID]/cmdline

This will show the full path to the miner’s executable file, which will help remove it.

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If ADB Does not recognize the device, try reinstalling Xiaomi drivers USB Drivers or using other drivers USB-Often the problem lies in the unoriginal cables with damaged contacts for data transmission.

How to remove miner from Xiaomi phone

If a miner is detected, proceed by the following algorithm:

1. Remove suspicious apps: Go to Settings → Apps → Application Management and sort the list by installation date. Remove anything you didn’t install yourself, especially apps with names like System Update Helper or Device Optimizer.
2. Clear cache and data: For system applications (if infected), click Storage → Clear cache and data. This may disrupt some functions, but will remove malicious code.
3. Disable Administrator Rights: Go to Settings → Passwords & Security → Device Administrator Rights and Disable Rights for Unknown Applications.
4. Perform a factory reset (if nothing worked): This is a last resort, but it is guaranteed to remove the miner. Pre-backup the data through Settings → Additional → Backup and Reset.

After the miner is deleted:

• 🔄 Update your firmware to the latest version through Settings → The phone. → Updating the system.
• 🛡️ Install an antivirus (such as Bitdefender or Kaspersky) and perform a full scan.
• 🔒 Change passwords from Google and Mi Accounts as miners often steal credentials.

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If the miner was installed through a firmware vulnerability (e.g., MediaTek-SU or DirtyCOW), resetting to factory settings may not help.

How to protect Xiaomi from mining in the future

To minimize the risk of re-infection, follow these guidelines:

• 📥 Install apps only from Google Play. Avoid third-party stores (such as APKMirror or Aptoide) if you are not sure about their security.

Pay particular attention to applications that ask for administrator rights or access to special features (Settings → Special Features → Installed Services). Miners often request such permissions to make it harder to delete.

Frequent questions about miners on Xiaomi

Detecting and deleting a miner on Xiaomi requires care, but following this instruction, you can return the phone to its previous performance and protect it from repeated attacks. If the miner is part of the firmware, do not risk, but refer to official firmware methods or to the service center.