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uTorrent Quietly Installs Cryptocurrency Miner

Posted by Soulskill on from the your-cpu-is-our-cpu dept.

New submitter Eloking sends news that uTorrent, a popular BitTorrent client, is silently installing cryptocurrency mining software for many users. [uTorrent] brings in revenue through in-app advertising and also presents users with “offers” to try out third-party software when installed or updated. These offers are usually not placed on users’ machines without consent, but this week many users began complaining about a “rogue” offer being silently installed. The complaints mention the Epic Scale tool, a piece of software that generates revenue through cryptocurrency mining. To do so, it uses the host computer’s CPU cycles. ... The sudden increase in complaints over the past two days suggests that something went wrong with the install and update process. Several users specifically say that they were vigilant, but instead of a popup asking for permission the Epic Scale offer was added silently.

17 of 275 comments (clear)

  1. Why uTorrent? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    For something as important and risky as BitTorrent, why would you use a proprietary client?

    1. Re:Why uTorrent? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Exactly. It was great but not anymore. Either use an old version that had no advertising or switch to something else like qBittorent.

    2. Re:Why uTorrent? by ckatko · · Score: 3, Informative

      Yeah, people forget the 'u' really stood for "micro" torrent. It was tiny, it did what it was supposed to, and that's it. It's slowly become more and more of a monster, but you could at least disable the ad bars in the advanced settings. I refused to upgrade to the newer versions, and it looks like that was a good thing.

    3. Re:Why uTorrent? by MagicM · · Score: 5, Informative

      Ads? What ads? Am I the only one who messes with settings?

      Options->Preferences->Advanced
      offers.left_rail_offer_enabled=false
      offers.sponsored_torrent_offer_enabled=false

      I'm sure you should change these settings at your own risk. But it was worth the risk to me.

    4. Re:Why uTorrent? by LinuxIsGarbage · · Score: 4, Informative

      Ads? What ads? Am I the only one who messes with settings?

      Options->Preferences->Advanced
      offers.left_rail_offer_enabled=false
      offers.sponsored_torrent_offer_enabled=false

      I'm sure you should change these settings at your own risk. But it was worth the risk to me.

      Ads I could deal with (disabling). The problem is going to upgrade to a new version (when offered), you have to be extremely careful when installing to disable all the shitware. What broke it for me was missing the checkbox for conduit once. Conduit hijacks your home page and search engine, and is very difficult to remove. That was it. I stopped using uTorrent after that. Currently I use qBittorrent.

      It's irritating enough to deal with the useless bundled shitware during installation, it's even more irritating to have to carefully opt out of everything when installing an upgrade. Adobe Flash / Reader, and Java are bad at that as well.

    5. Re:Why uTorrent? by Bacon+Bits · · Score: 4, Informative

      I saw the writing on the wall years back. I posted an bug in the official bug forum, and the thread got locked in less than 5 minutes with a complaint that I didn't search. Except I did search. The first line of my post was even, "I searched, and while I found a similar bug, this one is actually different," and went on to explain why. Mine dealt with default column sorting (column A ascending, column B descending), theirs dealt with default column order (changing columns A, B, C to B, A, C). There was no similar request. It was locked so fast, the mod couldn't have actually paid attention to it. Alright, that's kind of stupid, but whatever.

      About half an hour later, I was in a post and made a comment on a different bug. This one was about interface layout, but it seemed to me like there was confusion going on about what the bug was, so I made an image with arrows describing the issue rather well (IMO) since I was able to replicate it. 5 minutes later, my post was deleted and my account was banned. No reason given.

      Contribute to community? Get told to fuck off. I've never encountered such blatant hostility to your own community before, and knew immediately that whatever uTorrent was doing wasn't worth my time. I was so irritated that I uninstalled uTorrent immediately and a found another client even though at the time they were all significantly worse (I started with Transmission, when was just getting popular on OS X, then Deluge, still in beta, then eventually qBittorrent where I've stayed since 1.x days). I didn't even wait for my current torrents to finish downloading or seeding. I have never and will never use any software from that company ever again under any circumstances. They're below Oracle. They're below Symantec. They're below Pearson. I'd install BonziBuddy before uTorrent. It's been a secret pleasure of mine watching those fuckers crash and burn over the last several years.

      --
      The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
  2. Crap Reports by TimSSG · · Score: 3, Informative

    "Reports that uTorrent silently installs Bitcoin crapware are... crap" http://betanews.com/2015/03/06... Tim S.

  3. Alternatives are available... by mr_jrt · · Score: 4, Informative

    When they started pulling this crap I switched to something else that apes the older, simpler, cleaner versions: http://www.qbittorrent.org/

    --
    Boo.
  4. Why is uTorrent so popular still? by jacks+smirking+reven · · Score: 3, Informative

    I used uTorrent when it was fairly new and it was excellent but in this day and age does it offer anything versus the number of matured open-source alternatives out there? I'm really asking if it has some special sauce that gives it an edge. When it was released one could look past it's closed source nature since it made it's mark being lightweight yet feature packed. Once the major update that brought advertising on-board I saw no reason to use it anymore.

    I've been using qBittorent for a couple years and it gives me all the relevant functionality without the mess as well as Transmission QT for Windows and Deluge, I can see no reason to use uTorrent when it's been shown repeatedly to be scum-ware.

  5. Re:Disappointing, but not surprising. by ZorinLynx · · Score: 3, Informative

    >the leading Java-based client

    If you mean the client I think you do, that has been crap for many years.

    Transmission is the way to go these days.

  6. only one reason why uTorrent is still popular by Voyager529 · · Score: 3, Informative

    ...because it's popular.

    Older versions could fit on a floppy disk, and didn't require an Installshield Wizard. Now, it's not at Vuze levels of bloatedness (though Vuze beats to a different drum and has a pretty nice "content store" for Creative Commons content and similar), but it's gotten big and annoying. Transmission works on Windows (...and OSX...and *nix...and plenty of routers and NASes...) and is nice if you don't need RSS feeds. QBittorrent does RSS and is simple to use. Deluge, while being a bit awkward, does a good job. if you're into a super-configurable ecosystem, rTorrent has 101 plugins and browser based frontends, but can also run exclusively from the CLI if that's your thing. The list goes on and on, but utorrent seems to be coasting on inertia, nothing more, nothing less.

    The interesting thing is that a similar "we'll borrow some unused CPU cycles" method of revenue generation caused a huge mess with Digsby, an IM client that was great and had a pretty good following until that point. Then again, with most technical folks opting for one of the plentiful alternatives to utorrent, I don't see this being a major impact.

  7. Re:Another piece of software to uninstall by DaRanged · · Score: 3, Informative

    Basically almost anything from cnet and download.com.. their 'network' installer is sickening.

  8. Re:Go back to utorrent 2.2.1 by snarfies · · Score: 3, Informative

    Why would you suggest PIG DISGUSTING closed source software when there are so many quality open-source solutions, including:

    Deluge
    QBittorrent
    Transmission

  9. Re:Another piece of software to uninstall by Holi · · Score: 3, Informative

    Let's not forget SourceForge

    --
    Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
  10. Re:Worth it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    After the suggestions that Tor was owned by the government, and the attacks against the Pirate (Bay) community, I'm rather surprised there's still an army of people running torrent clients.

    Do not confuse the Tor network with Torrents. They are not related.

  11. gave up on local torrenting years ago by Nukenbar · · Score: 3, Informative

    Just another reason to have a seedbox for all of your torrent needs.

  12. Deluge by Garybaldy · · Score: 1, Informative

    Try Deluge. It is everything uTorrent used to be.