Hackers Spawn Web Supercomputer On Way To Chess World Record

New submitter DeathGrippe sends in an article from Wired about a new take on distributed computing efforts like SETI@Home. From Wired: "By inserting a bit of JavaScript into a webpage, Pethiyagoda says, a site owner could distribute a problem amongst all the site's visitors. Visitors' computers or phones would be running calculations in the background while they read a page. With enough visitors, he says, a site could farm out enough small calculations to solve some difficult problems. ... With this year's run on the value of Bitcoins — the popular digital currency — security expert Mikko Hyppönen thinks that criminals might soon start experimenting with this type of distributed computing too. He believes that crooks could infect websites with JavaScript code that would turn visitors into unsuspecting Bitcoin miners. As long as you're visiting the website, you're mining coins for someone else."

Comments

Re:Crooks definition

[popo]

John Corzine stole a billion dollars and walked away without a trial.

The government of Cyprus stole money from people's bank accounts.

HSBC openly laundered money for Mexican drug cartels, and admitted to it. But no charges were pressed, as HSBC is too big to fail.

You could keep giving examples like the ones above for hours on end.

"Crime" is a very selective word these days indeed...