Chrome in the background, how to stop it for good

[denmos]

Hello!

I am using Firefox but, sadly, I had to install chrome to make my bank client work! The bank plugin worked only on Chrome, so... I already knew the dirty reputation of Chrome eating resources, sending info to Google etc. But I had to.
Quickly I saw that even when I closed Chrome, some processes were staying alive, and I could terminate them only using the Task Manager. Of course I UNchecked the "allow chrome to run in the background", but it did not change anything, some minutes after I closed Chrome, it came back in the background, eating up to 15% of CPU, though I was not using it.
Online search did not bring anything positive, so I investigated.
First I disabled some services, all those concerning Google.
But it did not solve all, Chrome every hour launched itself again, 5 processes and about 15% CPU!

I finally solved by looking at the event viewer and task scheduler, and saw that at the exact time Chrome ran itself, 2 tasks were ran: "ASUS Live Update 1" and "ASUS Live Update 2"! I haven't an ASUS card of course, so it was strange... Looking at the tasks, I saw that they were running Chrome every hour! I disabled these 2 tasks and the problem was solved: No more chrome in the BG.

These tasks were:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe"
"C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe"



So the point is WHY does chrome run in the BG, WHY does it hides its name under "ASUS" tasks, and WHY does he lie to users saying we can simply turn off the BG tasks by clicking a button in the settings?

I hope my bank will develop a plugin that works on ANY other browser than Chrome! And additionally I blocked ALL connections through Chrome unless those needed to connect to my bank!

I strongly recommend to NEVER use Chrome, anyway!

PS: Win 10/64

 

[neeyik]

So the point is WHY does chrome run in the BG, WHY does it hides its name under "ASUS" tasks, and WHY does he lie to users saying we can simply turn off the BG tasks by clicking a button in the settings?

Probably because the Asus Live Update tool is using Chrome, or potentially it's a reported malware issue. Personally, I would uninstall the Update tool and run anti-virus and anti-malware tools.

 

[denmos]

Computer is perfectly clean (scanned all in depth), unless this "Asus live update" task, I don't understand where it comes from... According to the site you quoted above, none of my MAC addresses were targeted...

 

[neeyik]

Well, unless your PC is an Asus laptop or it was a prebuilt desktop using an Asus motherboard, there would be no reason to have the Live Update tool. So just uninstall it and see if you still have Chrome running in the background.

Even there is Asus components (or it's an Asus system), the Update tool isn't really needed - one can get any relevant downloads from their website anyway.

 

[denmos]

The point is that there is no "Asus live update" software nowhere, even hidden files, just a TASK named like this, that runs Chrome with parameters 'streamcode"".""icu'
Seems to be a mining script, but cannot explain where it comes from.

 

[neeyik]

Apologies for not initially fully understanding your problem. This does seem to be a mining script issue and you've done the right thing by removing the task related to 'streamcode.icu'; I'd do a search through all services and the registry to find anything containing the same tags and remove them. You can also use FRST to scan your system for further traces of the script.

It's a little odd that anti-malware programs aren't picking it up, but it's probably because it's a fairly small javascript that just runs in Chrome - this isn't a fault of the browser, just a security issue on some websites.

 

[denmos]

Did you try to connect to the streamcode.icu site? Interesting CPU begins to work highly, immediately