@everpodai: How to check your Mac for a hidden crypto miner: two places to look Someone on Reddit says their AI coding tool, Claude Code, was building them an app to show how hot their Mac ran, and the readings looked far too high. A chip runs hot when it's working hard, so the AI checked what was working the chip inside the Mac, and found a crypto miner: a program using their computer to make money for someone else, with the chip running hotter than boiling water. And the miner wasn't just using their power: the AI warned that the miner could get into anything the person could, even an account they were signed in to on that Mac. It's one person's post, and nobody has independently confirmed it. Two places to look on your own Mac: 1. Activity Monitor, which is on every Mac (search for it). Click CPU, which is the chip, to see every program that's using it, and sort the list by the "% CPU" column, so the program working the chip hardest is at the top. On an idle Mac, almost every program in that list sits near zero; a program you don't recognize sitting well above that is worth looking up. The miner on Reddit was at over a thousand percent, because each core of the chip counts up to a hundred, and the miner was using about twelve. 2. What starts by itself. Looking isn't always enough: back in 2023, security researchers at Jamf found a different miner, in pirated Mac apps, that shut itself off the moment Activity Monitor opened. And the person on Reddit says their miner came from "cracked audio plugins", with a start-up item under a random name that started the miner with the Mac and kept it running. So in System Settings, click General, then Login Items & Extensions, and look at what's allowed to run in the background. If something there isn't yours, you can switch it off. When the story spread on X, one joke took off: "claude code is an antivirus now. by accident." But plenty of others asked how the person had missed the miner: "bro couldn't look at the activity monitor?" On Reddit, the person explained, as Cyber Kendra reports, that with headphones on the fans never sounded any louder, and with music and 3D software often open, a busy Mac seemed normal. If your Mac runs hot while it's doing nothing, those are the two places to look. And if you find something, it's worth changing your passwords from another device (Tech City Authority's advice on this story): as the AI warned, a program like that can get into anything you can on that Mac. Sources, as they stood on October 24 and 25, 2026: The post: u/UntilHEX on r/claude, as shared by International Cyber Digest (IntCyberDigest on X), October 19, 2026: x.com/IntCyberDigest/status/2112216201824805290 The joke: Johan (liebert_2026 on X), October 19, 2026: x.com/liebert_2026/status/2112251317997764608 The reply: Max Rovensky (MaxRovensky on X), October 19, 2026: x.com/MaxRovensky/status/2112233439168757889 The person's replies on Reddit, as reported by Cyber Kendra, October 19, 2026: cyberkendra.com/2026/10/claude-code-finds-xmrig-crypto-miner-on-mac.html The advice: Tech City Authority, October 19, 2026: techcityauthority.com/2026/10/claude-code-cryptominer-mac.html Jamf Threat Labs, "Evasive cryptojacking malware targeting macOS found lurking in pirated applications", February 23, 2023: jamf.com/blog/cryptojacking-macos-malware-discovered-by-jamf-threat-labs Apple, Activity Monitor User Guide: support.apple.com/guide/activity-monitor/view-information-about-processes-actmntr1001/mac Apple, Mac User Guide: support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/mh15189/mac #Mac #cybersecurity #crypto

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