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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.

19 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 greenwow · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It used to be great. It did exactly what you needed it to do and no more. Now it is a bloated mess like Azureus/Vuse. Now when I load UTorrent, my Windows machine slows down so much it is unusable. It loads gigabytes of ads per day. I have ISDN at home right now, and if you let it run 24/7, you can still download a surprising amount of files. That is except with the new version of uTorrent. It makes the ads a higher priority than BitTorrent so your files take days or weeks longer than they should.

    2. 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.

    3. Re:Why uTorrent? by MrBigInThePants · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I switched to http://www.qbittorrent.org/ a while ago.

      Kicks uTorrent's butt in every way.

      If you are too lazy to switch to a better client after it becomes rubbish then YOU are the problem, not them.

      Choice is only meaningful if you can and will exercise it....

    4. 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.

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

      Wow. I was a little skeptical, but my download speed nearly doubled after downgrading to 2.2.
      http://www.oldversion.com/windows/download/utorrent-2-2-23071

    6. 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.

    7. 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. Worth it? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  3. Another piece of software to uninstall by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Another piece of software to uninstall by juanfgs · · Score: 5, Funny

      If only we have software that we could trust, that we could see the code. And that when one vendor starts doing this, we'd be free for forking the project and making one without the bundled spyware. We could even come up with a license that protects this code, and ensures that everyone that forks the project has to respect the liberties of the user in the same way.

      Ohh well, I guess one can just dream

    2. Re:Another piece of software to uninstall by jandrese · · Score: 5, Interesting

      This means I have to abandon Java and Flash.

      ...

      I can live with that.

      --

      I read the internet for the articles.
  4. does anyone use the most current version? by derideri · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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?

    1. Re:does anyone use the most current version? by gbjbaanb · · Score: 4, Interesting

      people new to torrenting and need a client might look at old links (there are many on the internet) and go and install the very pretty looking uTorrent, and of course they'll want the latest version.

      Frankly, I ditched it when they started getting shitty with the adware, I moved to qbitorrent which doesn't look too dissimilar from uTorrent and all is good now.

  5. Go back to utorrent 2.2.1 by Eloking · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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
  6. 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.
  7. How is this post a troll? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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?

    1. Re:How is this post a troll? by aevan · · Score: 4, Funny

      Won't using HOSTS keep me safe from that?

  8. Unicode on Slashdot (5:erocS) by tepples · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Why doesn't /. understand Unicode in 2015?

    Past abuse of bidirectional override control characters to spoof comment scores. Details