An AI coding agent, Claude Code, identified malicious cryptocurrency mining software on a developer's Mac. The discovery occurred after the user noticed the computer was overheating, with CPU temperatures reaching 112 degrees Celsius.
The AI agent analyzed the system and determined that the XMRig miner was consuming approximately 1175 percent of CPU resources, which corresponds to roughly 12 cores. The malware had been added to the system's startup list on August 29.
Claude Code proposed stopping the startup process and moving the associated files to a quarantine folder. The user followed these recommendations, noting that only one file required manual deletion due to access restrictions.
Following the cleanup performed by the AI agent, the user conducted a scan using Malwarebytes to verify the removal of the threat. The developer had previously sought to monitor system temperatures to diagnose the cause of the hardware's performance issues.
