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GPGPU Bitcoin Mining Trojan
An anonymous reader writes "Security researchers have unearthed a piece of malware that mints a digital currency known as Bitcoins by harnessing the immense power of an infected machine's graphical processing units. According to new research from antivirus provider Symantec, Trojan.Badminer uses GPUs to generate virtual coins through a practice known as minting. That's the term for solving difficult cryptographic proof-of-work problems and being rewarded with 50 Bitcoins for each per correct block."
It's actually known as mining, not minting, even though it still makes sense. :D
A digital currency called Bitcoins, you say? Intriguing, tell me more!
"Stop failing the Turing test!" -- Dilbert
no, why would they?
Gold mined by slaves is still gold, and I guess the same applies here.
Be wary of any facts that confirm your opinion.
Good god, the "not backed by anything" argument again. Please come up with something that has at least a tiny contact with reality. Bitcoin has been criticized enough that you should be able to find a relevant criticism fairly easily with google.
Modern currencies typically aren't backed by anything. They only have value because people trust they have value. This works just fine for established currencies and we've already seen it works surprisingly well even for extremely tiny currencies like bitcoin.