Amazon’s Fire TV or Fire TV Stick devices have reportedly been hit with an old crypto-mining virus which may be slowing down the devices drastically as it mines for cryptocurrency for miners. The virus is called ADB.miner and is known to take over gadgets like Android-powered smartphones to mine cryptocurrency. Now, this virus may have found itself a home in a place which it wasn’t really designed for, your Amazon Fire TV device.
Thankfully, it is really easy to tell if your device has been infected, according to the good Samaritans at XDA Forums who spotted the issue. When your Fire TV device responds too slowly or comes to a halt frequently, it is a clear sign of the virus taking over.
Another visual clue to figure out if your device has been infected is a pop-up notification which shows up with the word “Test" with a green Android robot icon.
So how does your device get infected?
First the good news, if you have taken care of playing by the rules and not downloaded any illegal apps from other app stores rather than the Fire Stick app store, in all probability you would be safe from this issue.
ADB.miner comes from unsafe apps which have been downloaded from untrusted and unofficial sources. Ideally, these are apps that shouldn’t be running on your Fire Stick. The option of installing these side-loading unofficial apps, you will also need to unlock or enable your Amazon Fire TV’s developer options, found in Settings. If they haven’t been enabled, however, there is a strong chance your device is safe.
What to do if your device is infected?
The simplest way to clean up everything is to reset your Amazon Fire TV device or to download Total Commander (from the Amazon App Store) to find the virus and clean the malware off your device, as recommended by AFTVnews.
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