Torguard VPN client will consume 50% CPU when you're not looking

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Ceph92

Limp Gawd
Joined
Sep 17, 2019
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I know that's quite an accusation but listen to how weird this is. I don't know if malware got into their code or they're running some revenue generating resource theft thing, or what.

So I've been using Torguard for a while. Recently (in the last major version) I find my computers spinning CPU randomly and it's Torguard's client that's doing it. I could be running no other apps at all and there's little activity in Task Manager but there's TG consuming 50% CPU for no apparent reason. This consumption is at the expense of other apps, of battery life, it's causing heat and noise, etc. It's a significant CPU downgrade.

If I fiddle with the TG client app, it stops. If I leave it alone, in a few minutes it will be consuming 50% CPU again. This occurs on ALL of the windows machines I've tested it on. Each machine, I can hear the fans spin up randomly and usually it's TG doing it. IF the machine slows to a crawl, same thing, it's often TG and poking at it recovers the performance.

Here's some pics informally demonstrating this. All I'm doing here is minimizing the TG app to the task tray so you can see the difference. It doesn't matter whether other apps are running, whether there's network traffic or not.
 

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A lot of software is now doing background crypto mining without telling you. If that vpn client is something that the standard built-in windows client can handle, ditch it.
 
Very interesting, I run TG and NH pretty much all the time. Time to pause NH and see if TG starts using up lots of resources. That would be very disappointing, been using them for years though I have considered a switch in the past.
 
ZeqOBpf6 said:
Very interesting, I run TG and NH pretty much all the time. Time to pause NH and see if TG starts using up lots of resources. That would be very disappointing, been using them for years though I have considered a switch in the past.
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You can just look at task manager and see if they're competing for CPU.

Let me know what you find.
 
And boop! It's gone again. The background is the screenshot I just posted.

1644628349569.png
 
SamirD said:
A lot of software is now doing background crypto mining without telling you. If that vpn client is something that the standard built-in windows client can handle, ditch it.
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There's a built-in vpn client??
 
I can't repeat it. Leaving it in systray, "opened," active window, inactive window, it just sits at 0%. I did notice you are on 4.8.1 and I am on 4.8.6.
tg.jpg
 
ZeqOBpf6 said:
I can't repeat it. Leaving it in systray, "opened," active window, inactive window, it just sits at 0%. I did notice you are on 4.8.1 and I am on 4.8.6.
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I tried updating to 4.8.9 on two computers. So far it seems to have stopped.

Did the app stop notifying about available updates?
 
Every now and then applications will spike randomly like that. I wouldn't worry about it unless it's sustained and repeatable.
 
Ceph92 said:
I tried updating to 4.8.9 on two computers. So far it seems to have stopped.

Did the app stop notifying about available updates?
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I can't remember the last time I got auto notified. Definitely been an issue for me for a while. Thanks for letting me know there's a new version though!
 
Dan_D said:
Every now and then applications will spike randomly like that. I wouldn't worry about it unless it's sustained and repeatable.
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It was both sustained and repeatable. Something was triggering TG to consume 50% cpu.

Though actually the % seems to depend on the core count... fwiw
 
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ZeqOBpf6 said:
I can't remember the last time I got auto notified. Definitely been an issue for me for a while. Thanks for letting me know there's a new version though!
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I spoke too soon, it's still doing it. 4.8.9 and there it is eating up CPU.
 
Damn that's crazy.

You're saving if I left TG minimized to systray, left task manager opened for 5+ minutes, and didn't touch mouse or keyboard, that'd be enough to repeat the issue? I'll try it again Tuesday.
 
How many core do you have, 50% of a 12 core would be quite something, but if it is a 4 thread CPU.... and is just some time spike and not something sustained for 10-20 minutes.


Sometime my VPN application take6-7% for a little while on a 3900x 24 thread, that would be high on say a laptop 4 thread cpu.
 
LukeTbk said:
How many core do you have, 50% of a 12 core would be quite something, but if it is a 4 thread CPU.... and is just some time spike and not something sustained for 10-20 minutes.


Sometime my VPN application take6-7% for a little while on a 3900x 24 thread, that would be high on say a laptop 4 thread cpu.
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Mainly this is a 4-core laptop (i7-6820), but I'm also seeing roughly the same thing on another 4c laptop, a 2c laptop, a 6c desktop...
 
Ceph92 said:
I'm saying it's not necessarily 50% of the cpu, it depends on the core count. 50% of an I7-6820, 24x7, definitely isn't normal.
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Again, normal. If you take a CPU with 4 cores and a multithreaded task takes up 50% of the CPU resources it will drop to 25% when you change to a similar 8 core CPU. I've literally done reviews where I swapped different CPUs and in the exact same tasks, that's what happens. It's not a perfect formula in that it doesn't necessarily work in a perfectly linear fashion across all CPU types, but more or less, that's what happens.
 
ZeqOBpf6 said:
Damn that's crazy.

You're saving if I left TG minimized to systray, left task manager opened for 5+ minutes, and didn't touch mouse or keyboard, that'd be enough to repeat the issue? I'll try it again Tuesday.
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You can be working on the computer. I see it both at idle and when the cpu is high doing something like firefox tab-whoring. But in the latter.... of course... it's slowing down legit activity by quite a bit.

Generally it's a few minutes and it kicks off. After I updated to 4.8.9 it took a while to start up again but it did. I'll have to keep observing it...
 
Dan_D said:
Again, normal. If you take a CPU with 4 cores and a multithreaded task takes up 50% of the CPU resources it will drop to 25% when you change to a similar 8 core CPU. I've literally done reviews where I swapped different CPUs and in the exact same tasks, that's what happens. It's not a perfect formula in that it doesn't necessarily work in a perfectly linear fashion across all CPU types, but more or less, that's what happens.
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Yes I understand that. But this is not a reasonable amount of CPU for this task on these CPUs
 
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