Infested Stone is visually indistinguishable from normal stone, which is its primary danger in the windswept hill and mountain biomes where it generates in hidden blobs among real stone. Breaking it with any tool spawns a silverfish — a small but persistent mob that calls nearby hidden silverfish out of other infested blocks, potentially triggering a chain reaction. Plain Infested Stone does not generate in Strongholds: there the infested blocks are the cobblestone and stone brick variants.

A reliable way to identify infested stone without triggering it is the breaking speed: since Java 1.17, infested blocks break in half the time of their normal counterparts — faster by hand and with a pickaxe alike. Silk Touch on any tool prevents the silverfish from spawning, but the block drops regular stone, not the infested one; the infested block itself is only available through the Creative inventory or commands. Silverfish can burrow into normal stone and convert it, making Infested Stone technically renewable. No crafting recipe exists.