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This process that has come out of nowhere is hogging my CPU and I have no clue what it is or how to get rid of it. You can see in the image below what it's doing:

Process that is hogging my CPU

What is this process? How can I get rid of it?

Every time I kill the process, it spawns back up within a minute or less.

Someone on stackoverflow suggested I come here instead.

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    FYI you don't need to create a separate account for security.stackexchange.com, you can use your stackoverflow account. Commented Dec 11, 2018 at 19:12
  • BTW, can you put that file (/bin/watchbog) and any related files into password protected archive and post it somewhere?
    – Strigo
    Commented Dec 11, 2018 at 20:57
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    A Google search shows that watchbog may be related to known malware. Commented Dec 11, 2018 at 22:33
  • Unfortunately, we are not a malware removal site. Google says that it is malware.
    – schroeder
    Commented Dec 11, 2018 at 23:01
  • Seems likely that it's mining malware.
    – forest
    Commented Dec 12, 2018 at 3:25

1 Answer 1

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How can I get rid of the "watchbog" process?

One of the great things about Linux is that you can just redeploy it free. I highly suggest you just wipe your OS and re-install. Trouble shooting the virus is almost always an exercise in futility in my experience. So backing up files and doing a re-install is good ROI.

If you really want to get rid of the process without reinstall, start with a "locate" for it. It's running as ./ so it's most likely local somewhere on the file system. Chances are it's got a sister process that will re-install it if you delete it, but I'd start by hunting down the location of ./watchbog and then seeing if it's a binary or script and go from there.

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  • watchbog cannot be located. Is there any way to locate its hidden location? Commented Aug 21, 2019 at 10:17

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