Claude Code AI agent caught a crypto miner hiding on a developer’s overheating Mac

A developer using Claude Code to help build a temperature monitor app got a friendly warning from the coding agent. “Your Mac is running a crypto miner that I didn’t put there,” flagged the helpful agent. “I saw xmrig using about 1175% CPU, roughly 12 cores,” it informed its human master. Perhaps developer and Redditor UntilHEX should have sensed the crypto miner’s presence without AI help, as they admitted the malware’s presence “explains why my Mac has been running like s**t.”

Ironically, the cryptomining malware’s nefarious CPU cycle hogging activity is what may have led to its discovery and demise. Pondering over a screenshot of the Claude Code window, we see that this malware was probably added to the Mac’s startup roster on August 29. It looks like UntilHEX was inspired to develop a Mac temperature monitor app after this infection to track and diagnose why the computer was running so hot.

Claude stepped in after the Redditor was concerned …