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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.

9 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 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 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

  2. 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.
  3. 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