Can Malware hide inside windows security folder

Question

I have been trying to turn off my windows anti-malware executable but no matter what I do it won't turn off and I can't turn it off from task-manager. I believe, Ironically enough, malware could have infected that folder. I have downloaded things online that I'm fairly certain had malware in them and ever since then this has been stuck on no matter what I do. I'm wondering if that's even possible and if so how I can stop it. If that isn't the case then I still have no idea how to stop that from running as it's eating too much of my Ram. it might be a crypto miner but I'm not sure

Answer 1

Microsoft Defender has certain mechanism to prevent terminating its process and to prevent malwares to terminate and harm your system and therefore, you only could turn it off for a while. Regarding to your questions, some malwares are some complex and they might pretend to be legitimate process and hide anywhere. While Windows has mechanism to protect you, but everything is possible. I advise you to update Microsoft Defender and run a full system scan with it.
Try run scan with Microsoft Defender Offline which will perform scan before system boot up, take a look at:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/help-protect-my-pc-with-microsoft-defender-offline-9306d528-64bf-4668-5b80-ff533f183d6c
You mentioned about downloading something harmful which might cause this issue. In this case, I advise you to submit its sample to Microsoft, take a look at:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/wdsi/filesubmission
No matter how it operates or where it hides, as long as there is sample, there is a possibility to detect and remove it.