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uTorrent Quietly Installs Cryptocurrency Miner
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.
For something as important and risky as BitTorrent, why would you use a proprietary client?
Aren't bitcoins, between the drop in value and the ASIC enthusiasts, at the point where clandestine CPU mining is close to pointless? I realize that free as in stolen has its virtues; but it likely wasn't free to get their shitware, rather than somebody else's, bundled with utorrent, so I'm surprised that it was worth it.
Time to abandon utorrent. In fact, time to abandon all software who's owners bundle in adware/malware/anything-other-than-the-program-the-user-is-trying-to-install.
The only way this practice will stop is if users refuse to download and use software that does this.
A couple of years ago uTorrent started installing adware with their software as well, and everyone either bailed or went back to v2.2.1. So why would anyone be using the most current version of uTorrent anyway?
I'll not post any link here (it's quite easy to Google it anyway), but I suggest going back to utorrent 2.2.1. It's the last stable build without any malware/ads/crap. There's already many torrent site that doesn't allow utorrent version higher than 2.2.1.
Elok
A very rough estimate reveals that one $400 ASIC mining device for bitcoins that can make about $500 a year profit is equivalent to 150,000,000 i5-2400's running the hashing algorithm. So in other words, realistically, all the computers running uTorrent in the entire world combined would probably make the company about $5 or so, maybe $10 per year. Litecoins running Scrypt don't turn out to be much more profitable either. I actually don't think this news story is true.
"Reports that uTorrent silently installs Bitcoin crapware are... crap" http://betanews.com/2015/03/06... Tim S.
When they started pulling this crap I switched to something else that apes the older, simpler, cleaner versions: http://www.qbittorrent.org/
Boo.
With so many people using laptops these days, all the sudden additional heat, blowing fans and lack of battery life would become immediately obvious.
You just can't hide CPU-bound processes on machines these days and expect people not to notice. Especially people who are into torrents!
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.
Start using qBittorrent(www.qbittorrent.org). It is open source, cross platform and updated regularly. It should suffice for most bt needs. More info in their webpage.
With so many people using laptops these days, all the sudden additional heat, blowing fans and lack of battery life would become immediately obvious.
You just can't hide CPU-bound processes on machines these days and expect people not to notice. Especially people who are into torrents!
They don't have to get away with it. They just need enough to install it and not care to read Slashdot.
>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.
...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.
There are ways to hide a program so that increased CPU life would not be noticed:
1: Wait for the MSI install/upgrade mechanism to be used, then start using the CPU after it completes. The program installed will get the blame.
2: Ramp it up over a period of time, so the user gets used to his MBA eating its battery in two hours.
3: Wait until the laptop is plugged in and the screensaver is on, and hit it.
It eventually will be caught, but there are ways to keep all but the more astute people from noticing.
I am actually surprised more "free" programs don't do this with a stipulation in the EULA that they have free run to use the end user's CPU/RAM/IO/disk/network as they see fit, and there isn't anything legally that can challenge that.
I'd run my torrents exclusively on one of my Linux boxes, but none of the clients support proxies. WTF?
It doesn't matter what I'm downloading.... I'm not hanging my ass out there for potential DMCA abusers to hand out subpoenas.
Torrent used to be great. It had over 100 million users and was the most popular client for years. I remember the first version fit on a floppy, and you could xcopy install it. It was awesome. I did a test of different BitTorrent clients for a PC magazine, and Torrent won easily when it came to download speeds. It beat Vuze, as the poster I'm replying to mentioned, by more than 30%.
It was small and fast. It did everything you need. Now it is bloated and too slow to leave running when using your computer. Also, it wastes tens of megabytes of bandwidth per day downloading animated ads plus it uses so much CPU to show the ads that it overheats my new Dell laptop. The guy above exaggerated with this gigabytes claim.
So why was this guy marked a Troll? He is correct. Do we have a Torrent fanboi with mod points?
http://www.transmissionbt.com/
Any thoughts on Deluge?
http://deluge-torrent.org/
As far as these companies are concerned, not a single piece of punctuation dropped any old place in the middle of there 50 paragraph EULA is 'silent.' See? It's written right there in plain english!
As far as user behavior goes, silent has a very different meaning.
Betanews is so heavily riding the tip of the VC backed new tech industry that they are clearly not going to go against any sort of new fangled tech-oriented revenue generating schemes.
Just another reason to have a seedbox for all of your torrent needs.
Fortunately, that was a couple of weeks ago, when I wanted to download LibreOffice. I recalled from the last time that "utorrent is the thing". Back then, it didn't do ads. I would have left it installed to re-seed LibreOffice, but it didn't take much getting pelted with "Hottttt Roooskie wimmin are lusting after U" ads for me to remove it, with prejudice.
It's great.
Try Deluge. It is everything uTorrent used to be.
Deluge is a good option. I find it to be everything uTorrent used to be.
to mine my 6 year old atom "powered" netbook.
How many millions of years would it take my netbook to generate a bitcoin?
Why doesn't /. understand Unicode in 2015?
Past abuse of bidirectional override control characters to spoof comment scores. Details
I'm not familiar with how user session management works on OS X. Say you copy an application to the Applications folder, and you open a document. Then you get a power outage or you have to restart for a security update. How does the application register itself to restart when the Mac does? I imagine that an "installer" allows the application to put a shortcut in Startup Items to check whether it had been open and reopen itself if so.
Some publishers have the idea that customers who are willing to pay for something are statistically more likely to buy other things, making them better leads for advertisers. That's why cable TV has ads, satellite TV has ads, Hulu Plus has ads, and The New York Times has ads.
With so many people using laptops these days, all the sudden additional heat, blowing fans and lack of battery life would become immediately obvious.
BitTorrent really isn't something you do while connected to cellular Internet or public Wi-Fi. And if you have home Wi-Fi, you probably use the laptop with the charger plugged in, so an app's publisher can probably mine cryptocurrency unnoticed so long as it pauses while on battery.
The amusing part of this story is how everyone is basically lying about this "silent install" which never actually happened. Better headline: uTorrent quietly reveals people don't pay attention when they install things. News at 11.
Last 2.2.1 version
http://www.oldversion.com/wind...
For list of all older versions
http://www.oldversion.com/wind...
2.2.1 tiny, zero ads, supports magnet links, was made with original devs before they were bought out and the original coders were laid off.
One of the old devs helped provide sites with archive of all old versions.
Do not use past 2.2.1 if you want to use utorrent.
It has web interface, magnet links, zero ads, zero search bar, very tiny footprint. Its running on my old PC I use as a file server, app been up for a week straight as I leave it up and use the web interface via my tablet. Its only using 12k memory in the process list.
I miss Bram's original Python version. Lawn, off, et cetera.
Right. Because it was such an amazingly efficient client. (hint: it was just as slow and bloated as many modern clients. And it ran a single torrent per instance.)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Deluge likes to use random ports
Edit->preferences->Network, uncheck "Use Random Ports" and it will let you specify a port range, old-school style.
As so many in this thread have mentioned, there's lots of worthy alternatives: qBittorrent, Deluge, Transmission, that are open-source, and are not bundled with malware. I'm not going to use an older version of a program produced by a bunch of sociopathic scumbags pulling this dishonest bullshit. I'm going elsewhere.
Meldroc, Waster of Electrons
Does it have upgrade and fixes though?
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
I'd been using uTorrent for about a year or 2 now but the past few weekso the downloads have been super slow, regardless of the number of seeders leechers, time of day, anything, that made sense. This might make sense. And how many Chinese and Russian women do I really need to date anyway? Thanks to all the suggestions, I'll uninstall and try qbittorrent on Monday.
She messaged me in fear from some article that said the new uTorrent would set her motherboard on fire. She probably doesn't know what a motherboard even is. I can't wait to see the stats on uTorrent market share over the next month or two.
There must be an economics term for when a good product gets more and more exploited by the MBAs who take over until they haven't just damaged the reputation of the product but basically lynched their own brand.
For instance I am certain that if it weren't illegal that Air Canada would use their employees and probably their passengers for fuel. Only regulators have generally kept the MBAs that run that company from setting itself on fire.
All this furor over Epic Scale bitcoin miner, and none over other crud like Wajam that uTorrent installs?
Have a look at the last image in this article. "...may change your local proxy settings...collect...URLs of the pages you visit...content of encrypted webpages...Wajam may protect itself from other software that tries to wrongfully interfere with it."
Yikes. Lenovo got spanked pretty hard for packaging advertising malware that MITMs your encrypted sessions, but at least theirs doesn't officially threaten a counterstrike against your antivirus too.
Caveat Emptor is not a business model.
Been using this version forever (or at least since the horrible bloatware that was 3.x). Works fine, is lightweight, no complaints.
uTorrent alternatives you should have moved on to a long time ago; cross platform clients, with clickable links for the lazy:
qBittorrent v3.1.12
Deluge v1.3.11
Hey, congratulations for the first accepted submission. :) Ignore the dicky replies you are getting. Keep 'em articles coming.
I found Tixati was as close as I could come to what utorrent was in it's prime.
citations needed.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
Thank you jones. I know it's a little silly but after a good 10 years of browsing /. without any implication it's a little intimidating to start posting comment and submitting story.
Sadly, it seem that news is false after all but at least there's an interesting discussion here.
Elok
I'll give that a look.
Nostalgia, not performance.
Quite a few to choose from, according to Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.